My Favorite Things

December 15, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

As one faithful reader of this blog suggests that I don’t like anything or anybody and all I do is rage and mutter and throw poo like some deranged chimpanzee in a cage, I thought you might like a list of my favorite things. …Raindrops on roses and schnitzel with noodles brown paper packages tied up with strings girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes silver white winters that melt into springs these are a few of my favorite things…There now, Does that make everyone feel better?

Seriously: Here are some in no particular order (and with no commas): Alison Benedict Madeleine Theodore Elias Maddy playing Debussy Quarr Abbey steak Brideshead Revisited Cherry pie Pride and Prejudice Ben Li and T serving Mass George Herbert La Traviata Adam and Eve TSEliot’s Four Quartets South Carolina drive ins playing chess with Elias The Chronicles of Narnia Bruges Music of William Byrd Lord of the Rings Flannery O’Conner Therese of Lisieux Gangster movies Romanesque churches Mont St Michel Gregorian Chant Thomas More psalm 27 pictures by Cezanne BB King Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto the Cowper Madonna St Benedict London my iPhone Rievaux Abbey pictures by Vasnetsov Oxford country pubs in England Dante the Isle of Wight Chopin the gospel of Mark Kings College Cambridge Ping pong with Theo Ravenna Downside Abbey Rocinante on a summer day Chesterton red wine Chosatonga my biretta France Dominicans Trollope Rome Shawshank Redemption Maximillian Kolbe fried shrimp the Black Falconers Benedict XVI Ephesians Roger Van der Weyden Choral Evensong soft French cheese Anna The Brothers Karamazov the South Downs poems of Elizabeth Jennings the Book of Revelation Alec Guiness

I’m sorry there were no professional athletes or politicians on the list, and if you didn’t make the cut don’t worry I still love you….

Modernism and the Magisterium

November 23, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

After analyzing the modernism in the Anglican Church it was pointed out that there’s plenty of modernism in the Catholic Church too. True enough, and because blog posts should be short and punchy, I left this issue for another day.

It is true that all the problems I outlined in the post on Modernism in the Anglican Church are present in the Catholic Church. In many ways the effects have been even more devastating. At least the Anglicans with their good taste have preserved beautiful liturgy, architecture and sacred music in the midst of the modernism. Many Catholics have been even more gung ho on the dumbing down of Christianity, the vulgarization of the liturgy, art and architecture that is the philosophical offspring of modernism. The moral crisis among Catholic clergy which has caused so much pain and scandal is the direct effect of mixing clerical celibacy (which modernists simply cannot understand) with modernism and the moral relativism of the sexual revolution. The resulting cocktail was disastrously poisonous.

However, there are two distinct differences in the circumstances of Anglicanism and Catholicism. The first is that, while the Catholics have fallen into the same moral morass as Anglicanism, what they are doing has not been condoned and sanctioned by the Church. Yes, there are Catholic homosexual priests, Catholic bishops and priests and people who support women’s ordination, Catholic people who favor abortion, remarriage after divorce etc. etc. The Church teaching, however, is clear and uncompromising. So in the Catholic Church you find Church teaching which is firm and clear and traditional, but some Catholics dissent and have their own opinion which is liberal. In the Anglican Church is is virtually the reverse: the Church teaching is either non existent, open ended or actually sanctions the modernist stance but you have individual Anglicans who choose to hold to the traditional, historic faith.

The second fact, on which the first is built is that while Catholics are besieged by modernism, we still have the magisterium of the Church which repudiates modernism and offers the guide for authentic historic Christianity in the world today. We have a Catechism which states the church’s teaching clearly and positively. The Popes hold the line, defending, defining and teaching the faith in the face of modernism, and in opposition to it. The fact of the matter is that the Catholic Church defends historic Christianity and those of the faithful who go adrift do so knowingly. They are sheep who have strayed from the fold and from the Good Shepherd.

Individual Anglicans, on the other hand, are sheep without a shepherd. Without a clear authority structure they must make up their own minds, and while there is certainly some value in such independence of mind and action, it must be said that if one is going on a journey it would be possible to wander to the destination asking directions along the way, but it would be more sensible to use a map.

This brings me to the accusation that many non-Catholics make about Catholics: that we are unthinking zombie clones who are drinking the Kool-Aid and marching in lock step behind the Master. To be sure there are some Catholics who switch off their brains (as do many modernists) but this is not the expectation or the ideal. What is the proper relationship to dogma and infallible authority? It must be that the dogma, the moral code and the infallible authority are means to an end–they are not the end in themselves.

For a Catholic the dogma and the moral code which is given by the infallible authority of the Church is simply the ladder on which we climb. They are the map for the journey; the signposts on the way. They are vitally important, but it is the pilgrimage to heaven which is most important, and the final goal in this life is to get to the point where we walk on this pilgrimage so formed and guided by the dogmas and moral code that we no longer rely on them. We have learned to run on the path of God’s perfection with the perfect delight of love, doing all those things which were once burdensome with the simplicity of freedom and the beauty of holiness.

The Vicar on Thought for the Day

November 6, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Guest blogger, The Rev’d Humphrey Blytherington is Vicar of St Hilda’s, Little Snoring with All Saints, Great Snoring. He is a graduate of Plymouth University. He completed his studies for the ministry at Latimer Hall, Durham. He is married to Daphne and enjoys home brewing, model railroading and is an avid member of the Great Snoring Morris Dancers

You know Nigel, that’s a very good question, a very good question indeed. Why should an atheist have a go on Thought for the Day? I realize most of you fellows listen to pop music on the wireless as you go in to work each morning, but some of us enjoy listening to Radio 4 while we’re having our breakfast, and one of the highlights of the morning news is the ‘God Slot’ a great English tradition in which one of our religious leaders shares a few thoughts to inspire us and help us start the day.

Why just last week our own Bishop was on the wireless telling us about a wonderful new initative in the diocese called ‘Beers for Queers’. I must say it was a bit odd hearing Bishop Bracket speak in such terms in public, but he said it we shouldn’t be ashamed of names like that, and that it was a name chosen by the fellows who are like that themselves. Seems he has a special ‘advisory group’ for that sort of thing, and they’ve come up with this novel idea of a special Sunday when men who are that way would be offered free beer if they came to Church. He said it was a good chance for them and their partners to meet other families, and that perhaps they would join the church, get involved with the Boys Brigade and all that sort of thing.

What’s that? You thought they only drank cocktails? Now, now, we’ve got to be a bit more open minded don’t you think? After all, they’re just ordinary chaps like us– only different.

I can’t see that Bishop Bracket’s idea can do any harm. Goodness knows we can use all the help we can get at the moment. And that brings me round to the idea that an atheist should be invited to do Thought for the Day from time to time. At first I was opposed to it, and then I tried to listen to the other side and that Birt fellow who used to run the BBC assures us that atheists are, for the most part, very nice people with good manners and more often than not a top notch education. I mean to say, I hadn’t quite seen it like that before, and I can’t myself see what harm there could be in it if a good natured atheist had the soapbox from time to time. It might help us to see that they are ordinary fellows just like us who try to do our best, enjoy walking the dog on a fine day, don’t mind the odd lager shandy and giving a bob to the BBC Children in Need Appeal.

I was discussing the matter with Lavinia and Georgie the other evening when they came over with a casserole. No, Alan, Mrs Vicar hasn’t left me. She’s simply gone to visit her cousin in the Midlands for a time. Anyway, Georgie was rather forceful about the whole matter and said it would be a jolly good thing for that Dawkins fellow to have a say. She thought it would help sharpen up all our arguments. I have to admit that I’m a bit rusty on that sort of thing and I can see what she means. Why just the other day I was puzzling over the creation of the world and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why the Good Lord created the world at all. I remember old Canon Farnsworth at theological college dismissed it as a foolish question, but I’ve never been able to sort it out. Maybe these atheists could help me figure it out.

Lavinia said she didn’t see the problem. She said there are plenty of Church of England clergy who don’t believe in the ‘big good sky fairy’ kind of God. Said when she was up at Waddesdon Hall none of the theology faculty believed in God, and they didn’t see why that should stop them being clergy in the Church of England.

Anyway lads, atheists on the God Slot? I’m all for it. We have to look at the positive side of things. After all, everybody has a point of view don’t they, and who am I to say that my opinion is any more right than another fellow’s?

You know Nigel, I think I will have another drink, and tell you what– I think I’ll be very naughty and follow this one with just the tiniest whisky. I’ve got a bit of a chest cold coming on, and it helps. Could you manage that? Good. There’s a good lad. Thanks ever so.

Mantilla the Hon on Anglo Catholics

October 23, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Guest blogger Mantilla Amontillado, Ecclesiastical fashionista comments on the Anglican Ordinariate.

Let me tell you something hon, I went to England one summer for to study the English you know? I was maybe seventeen and I go to this English Language School in Kent. It was really nice, and on Sunday I go into town to go to Mass with my friend Anna. So we find this nice old church and go to Mass and it is beautiful. The priest is very nice. He’s wearing an old lace alb and fiddleback chasuble, maniple, the works. The deacon has on this beautiful brocade dalmatic and I can’t believe it the priest is wearing a biretta and everything is so wonderful I could weep. The music is fantastic and there is incense smoke everywhere. “Why can’t they do Mass like this in Spain?” I say to Anna.

So I’m coming out of church and we’re walking through the gate of the church and Anna says, “Hey look Mantilla! Look at this sign!” So I’m trying to read the English and it says, “St Barnabas Church of England.” Akkk! I just about choke. “What’s this?” I scream to my friend Anna. “This is a Protestant Church!” She looks at me and she’s– what you say? horrified. Her eyes are big like those olives we grow in Spain and she whispers to me, “Mantilla, we received the Body of Christ in that Church! They’re not Catholics you know! I think maybe this is a mortal sin.”

So we are walking home totally silent and thinking that probably we are going to hell. Then I’m thinking. “Hold on a minute hon. They are not Catholic right? OK. We make a mistake, but if they’re not Catholic then it wasn’t the Body of Christ anyway. It was just bread.” I’m thinking for a minute and say, “So that’s okay then I guess.” Anna says, “I know what you mean hon, but I still don’t think it was right.”

Anyway, this is my first experience with these people. Now I know better. We studied all this when I am doing my degree in Ecclesiastical Haberdashery at Salamanca University. The Anglo Catholics, they dress up like Catholics, but they’re not the real thing. Like those guys who dress like a bullfighter in tight pants and those sequin jackets, but they’re not really a matador. Maybe this is not so, what you say, ecumenical, but you know what I mean and I’m only telling you what old Monsignor Quixote say in the theology lessons.

Me? I’m not so close minded. I think I like these Anglo Catholics. They have style you know what I mean hon? They understand that the liturgy is supposed to be beautiful. They take time to dress right. They know how to be reverent. You know what, they know some other things too. They know about sacred music. I’ve been back to England to some of their churches. The worship is beautiful. Maybe they have one or two things to teach us Catholics, and maybe they’re not so Protestant and maybe a lot of them want to believe the Catholic faith.

Now I hear the Holy Father likes them to and he wants them to join the Catholic Church. I don’t know what you think hon, but this is music to my ears. If this happens this is going to shake up the world of ecclesiastical haberdashery that’s for sure. I mean think about it, has anyone decided what the proper outfit is for someone called ‘An Anglican Ordinariate’?

I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing, he aint’ going to wear black, and you’re going to see some serious lace, and he ain’t going to be wearing no polyester vestments and you not going to see sneakers in the sanctuary and you bet all those cassock albs are going to go.

The other thing about these Anglo Catholics is that their priests can be married! Now that is one hot tamale! I’ve seen some of these guys and they are not all fat old priests with hairy ears you know? I don’t know what you think hon, but I have really big mixed emotions about that one you know what I mean!!

Caitlin O’Rourke on Nuns

September 2, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Guest blogger Caitlin O’Rourke is a member of St Bridget’s, Church, High Dudgeon, New Jersey. Caitlin is eight years old.

I went to school yesterday for the first time I mean the first time in third grade because at St Bridget’s we start later than other schools and Fr. Florsheim was there and he’s our new priest and I really like him because he’s younger than the other one who was fat and had lots of hair in his nostrils even though he was kind of nice sometimes, but once he fell asleep in the confessional and Jimmy Pochowski was in there and when he heard father snoring he made up lots of stuff like he ran over a cat with the lawnmower and he robbed a bank and kidnapped ten babies and killed his grandmother and buried her in the backyard and Father just said your sins are forgiven go in peace anyway and Jimmy thought that was really funny and I did too until I remembered that it was a mortal sin and so I told Jimmy off and he tried to pinch me but I saw it coming anyway we have these new sisters who are different than old Sister Joan who wore a brown jumper that had a zip up the front and Aunt Margaret said it looked the uniform she once saw a woman in a mental home wear and I didn’t like her much because she always told us that the pope was just an ordinary man which everybody knows isn’t true anyway Sister Joan has gone into a rest home for old nuns now and we have these new Domino Sisters who wear nice long white robes and black long cloth head dresses that mom says are called wimples and they are all young and very happy and I like them a lot and one of them is my third grade teacher and they all have nice names which don’t sound like real names that their parents gave them they are not called Sister Joan or Sister Tracy but Sister Mary Maximillian or Sister Benedicta Teresa or Sister Mary Elephant which I like very much and think they’re very nice and holy and Flora and me both want to be nuns only I don’t think I would be a very good one because sometimes I don’t like to pray that much and I was picking a scab once during prayers when Sister Joan saw me and made a face at me that reminded me of a cat that I saw once when it was eating a chipmunk and Jimmy says that his sister Margaret told him that they are called Domino nuns from Nashville because they like Country Western music and because they all get their money from a man who once ran Domino’s pizza and is very rich I don’t know about that but my new teacher is called Sister Mary Albert and when I heard Jimmy Pochowski calling her Fat Albert I kicked him hard and I don’t feel bad about it because he should learn some respect.

Anglo Catholics to be Received?

August 6, 2009 By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Damian Thompson blogs at some length about the rumor that Forward in Faith (yes, that’s yet another sub group of an Anglican sub sub group) are ‘in discussions’ with Rome about corporate reunion. Is it just me, or is this getting a teeny bit tiresome?

Damian has too many precious Anglo Catholic chums. He talks sympathetically about an Anglo Catholic friend who could not become a ‘Roman’ because of the awful liturgies and architecture in the modern Catholic Church. I’m afraid this is just the sort of Anglo Catholic we don’t want. If he can’t see the big issue of authority in the church, and simply come across with no conditions and without worrying himself about ‘the right kind of liturgy’ then he hasn’t got a clue yet what it means to be Catholic.

Anglo Catholics should grit their teeth and get over it. I love beautiful liturgy, solemn worship and reverence at the Mass as much as anyone, and readers of this blog will know that I’m the first one to lament trendy guitar masses, goofy relevant homilies, politically correct liturgies etc.etc.etc. but the matter of converting to the Catholic faith is simpler and more fundamental and more important than the liturgy. They should remember Newman’s observation that Augustine or Irenaeus, should they visit modern Britain, would visit the ancient churches, and soon find themselves in the tin hut in the bad part of town with the Irish immigrants because there they would find not the prettiest church with the nicest liturgy and the finest music, but there they would find the true church.

There is a matter of priorities. Being received into the Church humbly with no conditions is necessary. Fussing over ‘proper liturgy’ is like humming and hawing over which china teacup to rescue when your house is burning down.

Already Rome has given the dis-enchanted Anglicans just about everything they want: They have the offer of their married priests being re-ordained. They have the offer (in the US anyway) of their own Anglican based liturgy. They have the offer (in the US) of their own quasi- independent parishes, and yet the number who have taken up the offer of Anglican Use can be counted on two hands, and the number of former Anglican priests who have come in under the pastoral provision is surprisingly small. Instead, they either quietly compromise with the Anglican-ECUSA heresy or they tootle off and start yet another Anglican schism, then they write me indignant emails saying ‘We are not a garage church you know…our Archbishop has a degree from Princeton…” Big whoop.

As my recent post said, “Be suspicious of anyone who makes a simple matter complicated.” The matter is quite simple: If you really understand the claims of the Catholic Church and if you really are called to be a Catholic, then there’s the Tiber. Swim it.

Furthermore, the Catechism says not to is a serious sin.