Sign of the Times

Well, Christmas Day has been and gone, and Archdeacon Cardy's sign has been and gone with it. Just as well, too. The latter was of course tasteless, ridiculous, objectionable, unbecoming, lewd, suggestive, indecent, and likely to cause offence. It was also not unexpected. We all love Christmas - most of us anyway. We like carols, and fake snow and Santa and jinglebells and all the other seasonal manifestations of Christianity which have endeared themselves to us from our playpens until now.

But we are not too sure about the real thing. You know what I mean, incarnations, resurrections, ascensions - stuff like that. In fact, we have grown beyond such charmingly mythological stuff. And it's not always that charming either, is it? Think of the wars, the inquisition, the intolerance, the oppression of women. Religion clearly turns good people bad - especially when they actually believe in it.

But fortunately we don't. And now we don't have to. We can have our christmas cake and eat it. And we have Sir Lloyd, Bishops Spong and Randerson, Ian Harris (he of the ODT column Honest to God - if you please) and the good archdeacon to give us permission to bypass the real thing in favour of Christianity-Lite, dogma-free and non-saving. It's just the thing for a guilt-free sacred snack. But shame on the clerical cooks for promoting spiritual anorexia.

Unheavenly Music

I am a born-again curmudgeon. Like my late father, I take exception to things which a more balanced and mature person would simply take in his stride. It was always a little dangerous to appear in public with my parent in his latter years. Embarrassment was too often an integral part of the experience. Like the occasion when we went into a shop in which muzak was playing. I don't much care for muzak myself, but I was not a little alarmed when my father started shouting at the rather bewildered salesman, "Do you have to play that bloody rubbish in here?" With my hand firmly on his arm, we made a rapid (but I hope not undignified) exit before he got into his stride.

These days I feel more and more like doing something similar - usually when I'm in Church. We seem to have developed a particular kind of Christian muzak, sometimes sung, sometimes said, and of great repellent power (as Queen Victoria said of Tsar Alexander the Third). Here is an example of the spoken variety, through which I gritted my teeth a few years ago: "Our Father who is in us here on earth. Holy is your name. In the hungry who share their bread and their song your kingdom come, a generous land where confidence and truth reign. Let us do your will. Bring a cool breeze for those who sweat. You are giving us our daily bread when we manage to get back our lands or get a fairer wage. Forgive us for keeping silent in the face of injustice and for burying our dreams, etc., etc." Perhaps you recognise it, or then again, perhaps not.

Here's another example from the same service sheet: "O God, we have come to the hills, where heaven and earth meet. Whisper to us sweet things as the breeze stirs through blades of grass. Shout to us marvellous things as the river roars down its bed of stones. And in this centre where the stillness of your whisper answers the thunder of your shout, etc., etc." It has an emetic quality worthy of the vapourings of Patience Strong.

It's not just the fact that such efforts are examples of the sentimental drivel which sometimes seems to engulf us that worries me. It's the fact that this is theological sentimental drivel. It has a message, and it's not one which is compatible with the Christian religion. Why? Because it is centred on us, not on God. All too many hymns and prayers - indeed whole services - seem to be about us, about making us good and useful, ready to usher in the kingdom, save the whales, defeat racism and sexism, and bring about heaven on earth. We have made the good the enemy of the best because it's so much easier to get on in society if you can adopt a cause everyone can applaud you for promoting. As for a transcendent God, that's perhaps just a little too difficult. But if we have lost our nerve (not to mention our faith) then we have no business concealing the fact with sentimental drivel. Christ said to Pilate, "For truth I came into the world." And the whole truth and nothing but the truth is that only God will do.

Neither here nor there

Allow me to come out of the closet. I am a member of Forward in Faith, an Anglican society the founding purpose of which was to ensure the continuance of the apostolic ministry of bishops, priests and deacons in the Anglican Communion. To this end, FiF has opposed the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate. Now, as it happens, I am not at all sure that women can't or shouldn't be ordained priests and bishops, but I am sure that the convictions of those opposed to such an innovation must be respected and allowed for.

This means (at the very least) that it must be possible for such Anglicans to have - by absolute right - a male bishop consecrated in a direct line from the apostles by an unbroken succession of male bishops. This was solemnly promised by the General Synod of the Church of England some years ago, and thus, to my mind, the abrupt termination in that Church of the so-called Period of Reception in favour of the innovators has been both dishonest and unjust - and much, much too soon. Hence my decision to join those who are now probably just tilting at windmills - at least where Anglicanism in the western world is concerned. But lost causes often have a fine air of tragic inevitability about them.

However, as my copies of New Directions have arrived regularly from FiF headquarters in London, I have begun to suspect that the business of ensuring the apostolic succession against an unacceptable degree of uncertainty is perhaps a stalking horse for another set of aims as well. And so it has proved with the response of the leadership of FiF to Pope Benedict's generous offer of water-wings to those Anglo-Catholics who are now dipping their disaffected toes in the dangerous waters of the Tiber.

This response has been little short of ecstatic. From the Bishop of Fulham (the chairman) on down, editorialists, writers of articles and contributors to the letters column have been falling over themselves to express their gratitude to the Holy Father for his wonderful, gracious, timely, generous (etc.) invitation to bend their knees in the House of Rimmon. (I know, I know, that's just a little extreme, and on mature deliberation I may delete it. Or not.)

For some years now FiF has been straying into areas whose connections with the ordination (or otherwise) of women are not immediately apparent. This is particularly so where the little matter of homosexuality is concerned. Astonishingly enough, they claim they are not for it. Indeed, like the Holy Father himself they are determinedly, almost hysterically opposed to it. On the face of it, their vehemence is somewhat surprising. FiF is almost entirely Anglo-Catholic rather than evangelical. And Anglo-Catholicism - particularly Anglo-Papalism - is somewhat gay. In fact it is very gay indeed. I was trained at St Stephen's House in the mid 1970's and a curate at All Saints' Margaret Street in the early 1980's and I know whereof I speak. And I doubt if things have changed very much since then.

In order to displease almost everyone I have wilfully adopted views on this subject with which few others agree. I have thought that same-sex relationships can be pleasing to God if the intention is that they be lifelong and faithful. Like heterosexual unions, I believe they should be publicly formalised, and hope that one day this will be possible in Church. But although for gay people such a relationship would be the equivalent of marriage, I wouldn't rush to institutionalise such a conclusion just yet. And I would certainly not try to compel the consciences of the faithful by imposing on them priests (let alone bishops) who are in such relationships. And finally, I would not agree that even those in a totally committed relationship have the right to adopt children - but then I don't think anybody has such a right, gay or straight, although its one they can obviously be given.

(At a later date, I will give you a little tour of adelphopoiia, which I believe has a considerable bearing on these matters. It will be something for you to look forward to in an increasingly bleak and desperate time.)

In my years in England I had a good many discussions with gay Anglo-Papalists about homosexuality and found (all too often) that they would not attempt anything like a truly personal same-sex union simply because the Holy Father forbade it. As a consequence they were often quite remarkably (and very impersonally) promiscuous instead. I found it a bewildering combination, but I have learnt since that such is often the case in these matters. Perhaps the present moral crisis of Roman Catholic clergy and religious is of the same order. Be that as it may, I believe Anglo-Papalism to be essentially untruthful, and I'm sorry to say that the members of this faction seem to be calling the shots in the Catholic movement at the present time - at least in the Church of England. But if you accept the papal claims as they were set out in the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Aeternus, and if you consider the pages of The Catechism of the Catholic Church to contain the very truth of the Faith, then - in my opinion - it's time to recite the Creed of Pius IV (as amended) and put on those water-wings.

Odi et amo

I must have been all of thirteen when I discovered the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church. Quite without any inkling of what it would lead to, I clambered up a steep flight of steps and into St Joseph's Cathedral and began what I can only describe as a kind of love-hate relationship which has lasted for the best part of half a century. My parents were horrified. "What is it that attracts you to those people?" my mother asked in some distress. When I enquired of my father why she should have reacted as she did, he pointed out that Roman Catholics were disloyal, clannish, bred like rabbits, and (worst of all) Irish.

But I didn't care. I appreciated St Joseph's very much. It was so much more alive and interesting than the Anglican cathedral in the Octagon where I sang in the choir. However, according to the prejudices of the time, it was essentially off-limits to a well-bred protestant boy like myself. I went to Otago Boys' High School after all, not to Christian Brothers, so in subsequent visits I had to turn the tops of my school socks down in the hope that my origins would remain undetected, and my treason unreported to family and friends.

Soon I was sneaking off on Saturday evenings to St Patrick's Basilica in South Dunedin for the Novena of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament celebrated in God's own native Latin, just the way it should be. It was there that I first sang such classics of the hymn-writer's art as Mary from thy Sacred Image with those eyes so sadly sweet, Mother of Perpetual Succour see us kneeling at thy feet. Who wouldn't warm to that?

I was determined to join up. The Roman Catholic Church seemed to be truly religious. People were always in St Joseph's praying, morn, noon and night. All sorts of people: male and female, old and young, rich and poor, black and brown, yellow and pink - you name it, they were there - and they loved it. They were proud to belong to The One True Church. Everything about it, the saints, the rosary, the Redemptorists, the Mater Hospital, the ancient and beautiful liturgy and much more, all testified to the fact that this was something very special which had come down from a glorious and sacred past, and in which many of the ordinary citizens of twentieth century New Zealand could feel right at home.

Then came little Paul VI, a nice, well-meaning little man who was unfortunate enough to succeed John XXIII. The latter was a man both great and good, who valued the sacred past while being able to relate to the present. Little Paul VI could do neither - at least not with any great comprehension of what was involved. He was a would-be egghead [see the Satan's Cuckoo post] who allowed himself to be led astray by liturgical eggheads such as Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, the Robespierre of modern Roman Catholicism, who (with his mates) gutted the Roman Rite and consequently decimated the Latin Church from Cork to Christchurch.

I was not pleased. Like millions of others, I liked the old Roman Rite very much. I greatly valued its timeless quality, its serenity, its transcendence, and its remarkable beauty. Let us not forget that it was for the celebration of this liturgy that Westminster Abbey and the great cathedrals of Europe were built. For this liturgy Rubens, Titian, Raphael and Michelangelo (among many others) painted great masterpieces. For this Liturgy Palestrina, Byrd, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky wrote some of their finest music. In its essentials, the Mass of the Tridentine Rite is the service which was known and loved by Benedict, Bede, Patrick, Hilda, Alfred the Great, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Thomas More, Teresa of Avila, Francis de Sales, Simone Weil, Maximilian Kolbe, Edith Stein and Thomas Merton. Not bad is it? But not good enough, it seems, for little Paul VI, who to all intents and purposes simply threw it away without so much as a by your leave, while at the same time maintaining (against all expectation and advice) the ban on birth control just because his predecessors had.

Of course, little Paul VI didn't leave his devoted (if diminishing) flock without a form of worship. No indeed: he thrust the Rite of the Ruined Remains down the unwilling throats of the faithful, whether they liked it or not. And by and large they most certainly didn't. Hence the increasingly empty pews from that day to this.

Little Paul VI's liturgical bolshevism gave me something of a shock. I was confirmed in my view that Christianity was not at all the same thing as mere ideology - even fashionable theological ideology. I saw the point of Archbishop William Temple's dictum Mankind can be saved by only one thing - worship. Likewise Oscar Wilde's remark We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars, seemed to be remarkably relevant. It appeared, however, that at the new Roman Supper of the Lord Stars are off, Luv.

A few years previously I had received a different kind of shock in St Joseph's Cathedral when I was idly thumbing through a missal which someone else had left behind. In its pages I found a little pamphlet about the Sabbatine Privilege, according to which, Our Blessed Lady will descend to purgatory on the Saturday following the death of a member of the Carmelite Order (or its Confraternity) and will personally liberate him from the flames and conduct him to heaven. I found some difficulty in believing this. Clearly it meant that if you were drowning in your bath, you would be well advised to do so on Friday night, and as you went down for the third and final time, you should make sure that the two little strings joining the front and back of your scapular were to found lying neatly on either side of your neck - just in case. An off-the-shoulder number might not do the trick.

Now of course, we don't believe that sort of thing anymore, do we? O but we did. Despite strenuous scholarly protests, various popes endorsed this splendid heresy, until finally even they started to back off, and reinterpret the matter in a rather more Sea of Faith sort of way. But I was still somewhat shaken to find that they had ever entertained such an idea at all, even just a little. So by the time I entered St Stephen's House in Oxford to train for the priesthood, I had already developed that peculiar kind of semi-detached and highly ambiguous relationship with the Holy Roman Church which has been such a feature of English Anglo-Catholicism ever since the late John Henry Newman and his deplorable friend Richard Hurrell Froude muddied the waters in the nineteenth century.

But more of that in the next post.

Stepping Out

Further to my last post, you can see the Seises for yourself on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYEaeGjMp3A&feature=related. The music isn't up to much (there seems to be dearth of theorbos and an excess of little girls) but the feathered hats and the footwork make a quite remarkable sight before the High Altar of Seville Cathedral during High Mass. To get the full flavour you will have to go on to Part Two for the sound of the castanets (with long coloured ribbons) which the choirboys cum pirouettists hold in their hands. Perhaps we Anglicans could follow the example of the Spanish and introduce Morris Dancing into the Sacred Mysteries. It would probably be a lot more appropriate than the somewhat unliturgical St Vitus Dance which seems popular in a number of our Churches at the present time.

Backward, Christian Soldiers

In the last week or so I have been rereading one of my favourite books, A Stranger in Spain by H.V. Morton - he of the In Search of England/Scotland/Ireland/Wales et cetera books. I first came across the account of his Spanish travels (published in 1955) in the school library when I was about thirteen or fourteen. I was quite enchanted by it (and what normal teen-aged boy wouldn't be?) since it was full of wonderful descriptions of black-faced images of Our Blessed Lady wearing bejewelled crowns, and fascinating accounts of things such as the Mozarabic Mass or the dancing of the Seises (complete with castanets) before the altar of Seville Cathedral during high mass on the feast of Corpus Christi. As I say, what normal kiwi boy could resist such delights?

My enthusiasm knew no bounds. Quite soon I was sneaking copies of the Roman Missal and the Book of Common Prayer into the classroom to look at furtively while the masters droned on about such unimportant matters as geography and mathematics. Then one day a certain Mr Skelly (if I remember rightly) wanted to know what I was peering at under my desk. This invasion of my privacy was bad enough, but what followed was as unfortunate as it was extraordinary. When the other boys discovered what I had been looking at, they laughed, not at the teacher, as you might expect, but at me. From that moment on I was a stranger on this earth.

Truthfully however, my enthusiasm was as much to do with history as with religion. I have always been fascinated by the European past, largely because it has been so beautiful. I do not include (of course) the Black Death or the Holy Inquisition as examples of historical loveliness, indeed I am not talking about disasters, man-made or otherwise, at all. I am talking about (to use the most obvious examples I can think of) Chartres Cathedral, Dante's Divina Commedia, Handel's Messiah, Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son, and so on ad infinitum. And note, please, that all of these have overtly (indeed essentially) Christian significance.

I loved it all. I remember the day when the music master (one Johannes Giesen) no doubt despairing of knocking an appreciation of sonata form into the heads of a class of resolute philistines, decided to show us a film about Florence under the Medici instead. Almost half a century later I can vividly remember my amazement as I saw the cathedral's belltower and Brunelleschi's dome for the first time. And when school was over for the day I rushed off to the public library to get hold of books on the subject. Illustrated books of course, nothing too taxing. And anyway, who cares what various learned aesthetes have to say about it all? Just look at the pictures, for heaven's sake, look at the pictures.

All this has great importance, not just for me, but for many others as well. We live in a society largely disenchanted with its past. Thus "old" music, "old" prayers, "old" buildings and so on, are often seen as obstacles to faith, rather than (as they have been for so many) the very opposite. Furthermore, our society likes to think of itself as egalitarian. No elitism for us. No organs when we could have guitars, no antiquated vestments when we could have smart and fashionable contemporary dress. And worst of all perhaps, no beautiful liturgical texts drenched in the sanctity of centuries when we could have mere committeespeak instead.

Perhaps in a democratic and egalitarian society we should be content with our much vaunted modernity, but I certainly hope not. Why does our inclusiveness and respect for the rights of the individual leave so many individuals feeling very excluded? Why do I get the impression that we have the liturgical equivalent of two legs good, four legs bad? In the Roman Church at the present time there is a movement sometimes called the Reform of the Reform. Perhaps we Anglicans could do with something similar.

Satan's Cuckoo

A few weeks ago we celebrated John Calvin's five hundredth birthday in Dunedin. When I say we, I really mean the participants at a conference held in his honour at Knox College. I wouldn't be seen dead celebrating him myself. On the occasions when I have visited my good friend the Master of Knox I have had to walk past a large picture of the birthday boy, and have always felt the same sort of outrage which I imagine I would feel if I visited the German Embassy and found a nice photograph of the late Fuehrer in a place of honour on its walls.

This is not quite as mad as it seems, when you consider that Calvin played Dr Goebbels to Our Hitler in Heaven, a deity of well-nigh infinite sadism, content to create billions of human beings whom he knew would require "irresistable grace" in order to be saved from an eternal Auschwitz - and then quite cheerfully denied it to them. And all for no better reason than his personal pleasure in exercising his sovereign will, utterly uninhibited by any such notions as compassion and mercy.

We are told that the Sage of Geneva has been traditionally misrepresented and that modern historiography has at last started to redress the balance, but still, as Alec Ryrie, the Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University says, "Calvin was an intensely arrogant and argumentative man, who could not abide to be crossed. He could be vicious, especially to his friends. Opponents, including those who rejected or disliked his vertiginous moral standards, were lambasted, driven into exile, or, on one notorious occasion, put to death."

How very Christlike. And this is the man who even today has an enthusiastic following of people who claim to be Christians, and even worse, claim that Calvin has provided the best account of the Christian religion since St Paul - or possibly his great mentor Augustine of Hippo, from who he derived much of his appalling doctrine of grace. Augustine, remember, said that the fact that God saves some people shows his mercy, while the fact that most people are lost shows his justice. And I seem to remember that a seventeeth-century Roman Archbishop of Tuam called Florence Conry wrote a whole book in defence of Augustine's belief that "the very unbaptised babes crawl about the floor of hell." (And just in case you are wondering, Florence was a boy baby himself and not a member of the Movement for the Ordination of Women.)

Eggheads all, and by eggheads I mean people for whom ideas are often more real than reality itself - to the exclusion of irrationalities like empathy and compassion. Witness the more unbending Pharisees' devotion to the Law, not to mention the works of such enthusiastic ideologues as Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot nearer our own time - all driven to murder millions for the sake of their pet theories. How Satan must have loved them (if love is quite the right term to use where the devil is concerned!). And how very pleased he must have been with John Calvin, who so cleverly turned the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ into the Heavenly Hitler, the Celestial Stalin, with eternal Bergen Belsens, Dachaus and Gulags all ready and waiting to torment the majority of his children beyond endurance just as soon as they throw off this mortal coil.

Clearly Calvin's God is actually Satan's Cuckoo.

Assumption assumptions

When I posted the last entry, I was not entirely sure that I was saying what I wanted to say as clearly as I wanted to say it. Then I received a comment which asked why I felt the assumption was stretching my capacity for belief too far when I was happy to affirm such things as the resurrection and the transfiguration, particularly as the assumption would be "one of the easier wonders" to perform. This resembles the defence of the Immaculate Conception made by Duns Scotus, the great mediaeval Franciscan philosopher and theologian, when he said: potuit, decuit, ergo fecit (God could do it, it was fitting that he did it, and therefore he did it). But did God agree with Duns Scotus, or was the latter assuming too much? (Pun intended, I fear.)

I believe that the Mother of God reigns in glory, that she appeared to such saints as Seraphim of Sarov, and that by the Holy Spirit (as St Silouan of tne Holy Mountain says) she sees us and hears our prayers. However, I also believe (with Lossky - humbly, I might say!) that the glories of Our Lady are part of the inner mystery of the Church, and not necessarily to be proclaimed from the rooftops. But I should also wish to affirm my belief (gratefully!) in the continuing experience of the Blessed Virgin as the Mother of the Church which has been integral to Catholic Christianity up to the present day.

In Caelum

Well did she? Did the Mother of God fly into the heavens, body and soul, like the shuttle from Cape Canaveral? Pope Pius the Twelfth said she did and proved it by saying so infallibly in 1950. The Eastern Orthodox on the other hand combine a certain mystical fuzziness about it with a liking for an apocryphal sixth-century farrago on the subject which begins as follows: 'As the all-holy glorious Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, as was her wont, was going to the holy tomb of our Lord to burn incense, and bending her holy knees, she was importunate that Christ our God who had been born of her should return to her...and while she was praying, it came to pass that the heavens were opened, and the archangel Gabriel came down to her and said: "Hail, thou that didst bring forth Christ our God! Thy prayer having come through to the heavens to Him who was born of thee, has been accepted; and from this time, according to thy request, thou having left the world, shall go to the heavenly places to thy Son, into the true and everlasting life."' A little later in this account we learn that Our Lady asked for the presence of the holy apostles at her passing, and so they were borne on clouds by a whirlwind to witness her departure. Hence the ikons which show them getting a good view of the proceedings from somewhere in mid-air.

Well, scripture says something almost as fantastic about Elijah and perhaps Enoch as well, and I can't help feeling that if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for the Mother of God. But it does, I think, push my capacity for belief just a bit too far. And it makes me fairly indignant as well. Why does every detail have to be rewritten by the (fairly dim) light of human piety? And why does the lily have to be so thoroughly and comprehensively gilded? As the Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky observed, 'The authors of the apocryphal writings often alluded imprudently to mysteries about which the Church had maintained a prudent silence...The Mother of God was never a theme of the public preaching of the apostles...While Christ was preached on the housetops in a catechesis addressed to the whole universe, the mystery of the Mother of God was revealed only to those within the Church.'

Even King James the First said that the Blessed Virgin was far above all God's creatures, and the assumption, whether literally true or not, is surely a celebration of that fact. To whatever glory human beings are destined (and that is surely to do with their sharing in the divine nature, as in 2 Peter) Our Lady is already there. St Gregory Palamas described her as the Boundary between the Created and the Uncreated, which seems all right to me. But to quote Lossky again, 'Let us therefore keep silence, and let us not try to dogmatize about the supreme glory of the Mother of God.'

Assumpta est Maria

On Sunday we will be keeping the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. I realise, of course, that we will be somewhat tardy in our observance of this solemnity, but for years now (with episcopal permission) we have kept most of the major festivals on the Sundays following. The days when Father Roger Taylor could expect a full turnout at 6am in St Peter's for festivals (followed by breakfast in the hall) are long gone, and even the evenings seem to be somewhat occupied ever since they started showing the Forsyte Saga on television with our own, our very own Nyree Dawn Porter over-acting all across the little black-and-white screen. However in our defence, I would remind you of the former practice of 'Sundays in the Octave' - not to mention After-feasts in churches further to the liturgical east.

In my childhood the Assumption did not loom large in New Zealand Anglicanism, indeed it didn't loom in it at all. Not until I arrived in the northern hemisphere in 1969 did I discover it outside the pages of book (the Missale Romanum, I fear). Remarkably, perhaps, this was at All Saints, Margaret Street W1, on a beautiful summer's evening. Remarkable, because exactly ten years later I would be observing the same festival in the same church, but on the other side of the altar rail.

Not long before my ordination (as I wrote in a previous entry) I travelled with a fellow-ordinand (and another of his friends) to what was then the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. We went by way of Austria, and found ourselves on the eve of the Assumption in a campsite halfway up a mountain overlooking Salzburg. And I hated it. It was early evening, the weather was glorious and the view breathtakingly beautiful. And I hated it. My travelling companions had suggested that we had no need for lunch, afternoon tea, or the merest of snacks, especially since we had a long way to go, "So you won't mind, will you Carl, if we drive on without stopping?" Well yes I did, but as the hearty healthy Kiwi Joker travelling with a couple of effete Poms, of course I agreed.

In my father's family there is something of a history of problems with low blood sugar. So by the time my travelling companions were congratulating themselves at having arrived at Salzburg in time to enjoy the splendid view before the sun went down, I had become not just suicidal but vaguely homicidal as well. And I hated the view. But then there was a miracle! Baked beans cooked on a little primus stove wrought an almost Damascus Road-like conversion in my attitude to life, the universe, and everything - all within twenty minutes or so. And the view improved as well.

Having made a splendid recovery I made my way with the others on the following glossy morning through the pealing of church bells to the beautiful cathedral for High Mass of the feast. As the annual Salzburg Festival was still in full swing, the musical setting was to be (and indeed was) Orazio Benevoli's Mass in fifty-seven parts, a little baroque extravagance requiring four choirs, four chamber orchestras and about eight soloists. Wonderful! We positioned ourselves near the front of the nave (standing room only) and awaited the solemn arrival of the Sacred Ministers and the commencement of the Holy Mysteries.

And here they come! About half-a-dozen rather elderly canons in golden fiddleback chasubles (good), the archbishop of Salzburg himself (splendid), and an extra cardinal (for good luck). But where are they going? Can they not see the beautiful high altar rearing up at the east end of the cathedral? Why are they heading for a mere ironing board in the crossing - and why are my homicidal feelings returning? I have had a good breakfast after all. But I could have thrown it up when the service began with William Cardinal Conway, (titular) archbishop of Armagh, greeting all us Austrian Catholics at some length in the same dialect (if not the same tone of voice) which we have come to associate with that other monument of Irish Christianity, Dr Ian Paisley. It is true that nothing could detract from the unique glory of the Mother of God on the greatest of her festivals, but the clergy certainly gave it their best shot, alas.

However the music was OK. Just.

Preaching in the Pyrenees

Snooping about on the net recently I was a little suprised to find a youtube video of Rowan Wlliams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, preaching at the shrine of Our Lady at Lourdes. There he was, in the underground basilica of Pius the Tenth (which looks more like a vast carpark) preaching to an enormous congregation which appeared to include members of the French hierarchy. So far so good. Very ecumenical. And we cannot give Our Blessed Lady too much honour. (Well actually we can, but not if we are good Gallican Anglicans.)

The archbishop preached a fine sermon, but every now and again a little phrase popped up which made me feel rather uneasy. He said things like,"When Mary spoke to Bernadette." Did she really? Did she (for example) honestly endorse St Augustine's version of original sin by saying (in fluent Gascon Occitan), "Que soi era Immaculada Concepcion" - I am the Immaculate Conception? I hope not. I am all for the belief that Our Lady was sanctified from the very moment of her conception - even although I'm not quite sure what that could really mean with reference to a small group of cells in her mother's womb. I also believe that she was prepared by grace for a vocation in time and eternity outshining all others except that of her divine son. But like the Eastern Orthodox, I would prefer not to define such things too tidily, and furthermore, I would certainly not want to take St Augustine (genius though he undoubtedly was) as my mentor and guide on matters connected with the doctrine of grace.

So what was Dr Williams doing? I should be surprised to find that he actually believed everything he said in his sermon. We often talk about religious matters in a rather literal way even when we don't actually mean it. Thus we speak about Christ ascending to heaven, when we are pretty sure that our eternal destiny is not to be located somewhere in the Milky Way - unless we are Mormons, that is, who seem to have very strange ideas about this, as about so much else.

And where Lourdes is concerned there is a need for some reserve. Only eleven years before Bernadette's visions began, Our Lady of La Salette had made her appearance near Grenoble to a couple of children, saying to them (among other things), "If my people will not submit, I shall be forced to let fall the arm of my Son. It is so strong, so heavy, that I can no longer withhold it...If I would not have my Son abandon you, I am compelled to pray to him without ceasing; and as to you, you take not heed of it...Six days I have given you to labour, the seventh I had kept for myself; and they will not give it to me. It is this which makes the arm of my Son so heavy. Those who drive the carts cannot swear without introducing the name of my Son. These are the two things which makes the arm of my Son so heavy..." And more of the same. I'm afraid it doesn't sound much like the Christ of the Gospels to me - or his Mother. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin is an important part of the faith, but it's faith - not credulity - which gives honour to God and his Saints.

Queen Victoria, that most reformed of sovereigns (after Edward the Sixth and William of Orange) is said to have been somewhat put out at being upstaged by the Queen of Heaven among her Roman Catholic subjects with their enthusiastic devotion to the Immaculate Conception, and to have consoled herself by standing in front of a mirror and proclaiming, "I am the Diamond Jubilee." Perhaps she did, but I would be surprised if she suddenly found herself up to her ankles in a spring.

Mitteleuropa

This is the month I should have been have been in sunny Central Europe enjoying the wonderful hospitality and company of my dear friends Tim and his wife Pip, and Tim's opera-singing cousin Martin, all originally from Dunedin. For reasons of health (perhaps a tear-stained entry on the subject at a later date) I have decided to remain at home until various physicians and medical experts have worked out what to do with me. It was my particular desire to go to Prague again, one of the most beautiful cities imaginable, which I last saw more that thirty years ago in the bad old days of Dr Husak's regime. I remember standing beside the monument to Jan Hus and saying to myself, "I would love to see this place again when it's free - but it never will be in my lifetime." But of course, now it is.

I went to what was then the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia twice for a holiday, once before I was ordained, and once afterwards. Before the first visit I didn't want to to go to Czechoslovakia at all, but I didn't have a car, and couldn't drive, while Bernard, my fellow ordinand, both did and could. And he had studied in Brno in 1968 during the Prague Spring, and wanted to see the country again. I would have preferred the south of France (hot!) but to Mitteleuropa we went all the same.

Like good little ordinands we kept up the Daily Office, so when we (actually I) got lost in Prague and missed meeting back at the car at the appointed time (which meant in turn that we missed mass at St Andrew's Church at 4pm) I suggested we walk down the road to the Carmelite Church of Our Lady of Victories to say evensong quietly in the back pews. I knew that this Church was also the home of the celebrated image of the Divine Infant of Prague (copied all over the world) but I didn't realise that once inside the building you could cut the atmosphere of prayer and holiness with a knife. I was somewhat overwhelmed.

I was also greatly impressed by the number of young adults pursuing their devotions on their knees. No higher education for them in People's Czechoslovakia, no good well-paying jobs for them to look forward to! No indeed! In fact, later in a small shop in the grounds of the Castle, as soon as the rather handsome-looking middle-aged woman behind the counter realised that we were from what was then "the West" (actually Prague is further west than Vienna) she started almost shouting (in English) that she had been the editor of a metropolitan newspaper, and that her son - who had a PhD in the sciences - was merely a night watchman in the countryside, and that we should tell everyone as soon as we got home. Needless to say, we didn't know how to react to this sudden outburst, and just felt embarrassed and depressed.

But as I say, I had considerable respect for the worshippers in the Carmelite Church. I was also impressed by the ceiling, which had a number of coats of arms painted on it. One of these was that of the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary and Bohemia - the third of these being the present Czech Republic. The last emperor and king was Charles of the House of Austria - which is how John Paul the Second described him when he beatified him only a few years ago in the presence of the members of the Imperial family, including the late sovereign's eldest son and heir the Archduke Otto, aka Dr Otto Habsburg, now aged ninety-five and the longest serving member of the European parliament when he retired a few years ago.

Looking at Kaiser Karl's arms on the Carmelite ceiling I remembered that his widow, Kaiserin Zita, was still alive in exile in Switzerland (she lived until 1989). So during this one woman's lifetime, the citizens of Prague had endured two world wars, one great depression, years of Nazi tyranny, and decades of Soviet dictatorship. I rather think we have been let off lightly by comparison.

Despite the fact that it wasn't advertised on the list of Sunday services at the cathedral, mass began (in incomprehensible Czech) at an altar halfway down the right hand side of the nave, below the shrine of the Divine Infant. Naturally, we presented ourselves (gratefully) for communion. But clearly we would not have made particularly good undercover agents during the cold war which was on at the time, since the priest who said, "The Body of Christ" to everyone else in incomprehensible Czech (all those consonants!) said "Corpus Christi" to us!

After Bernard and I were priested and in our first parishes, we went again to Prague, and on Sunday went to mass in the Carmelite Church once more. This time a wonderful seventeeth-century mass for double choir and orchestra (the organ substituting for the latter) resounded from the choir loft. And, lo and behold, the very same priest who had celebrated on our last visit presided at the high altar.

Since the velvet revolution the Church has been returned to the Discalced Carmelites, and would appear to be doing good business, if I can put it like that. But I was certainly impressed by the witness of the priest and people who kept the faith in the bad old days - and I can't help wondering what they would have thought if they had known that in 1989 President Havel and his government would begin their reign by attending the Cathedral in state for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

Franciscan Salesian

I have another reason for calling this blog Gallican Anglican. In the remainder of the service following my ordination to the priesthood (a truly life-threatening experience, but more about that later) I found myself thinking two completely unrelated thoughts (along with a great many others, since ordination is not something that you can simply take in your stride). The first was the happy realisation that I would never have to read another book without coloured pictures in it ever again - i.e. no more exams. The second was the regret that I had not taken Francis as an ordination name in honour of St Francis de Sales.

I find some of the canonised saints rather alarming - Pius the Fifth, for example, stoking the inquisitorial fires and encouraging the Spanish Armada. But not Francis de Sales, and this for a number of reasons. Firstly, the example of his extraordinary holiness during what seems to have been a kind of nervous breakdown when he was a young man. For some reason he was convinced of the truth of the Augustinian doctrine of predestination: election to eternal joy for the few, and reprobation to eternal agony for the rest. And he included himself in the rest. But even so he made up his mind to serve the Lord in this life, before he was unable to do so in the fires of hell. That's pretty good, but it gets better. After months of this, in great agony of mind, he found himself in a Parisian Church saying the Memorare (Remember, O most loving Virgin Mary, that it is a thing unheard of that anyone ever had recourse to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thine intercession, and was left forsaken ... ) when he heard the voice of Christ saying to him, "I do not call myself the Damning One, my name is Jesus."

From that moment St Francis was completely restored, and went on to become one of the greatest spiritual teachers and writers of the western Church. He also went on to convert large swathes of Calvinists to a less sadistic deity than the one they had believed in hitherto, and as I noted in my last entry, he had that sane and sensible attitude to the office of the Roman Pontiff which all good Gallicans had, saying to Mother Angelique at Port Royal, "It is the duty of ecumenical councils to reform the head and members: they are above the Pope ... I know this, but prudence forbids my speaking of it, for I can hope for no results if I did speak. We must weep and pray in secret that God will put his hand to what man cannot ..."

As to my life-threatening ordination to the priesthood it took place in St Paul's in London years before the advent of the rather comely nave altar which adorns the cathedral now. However, there was at the time (1976) a temporary altar perched upon what looked like a very large box. There was not a great deal of room on the box, and besides the altar, most of it was occupied by Gerald, Bishop of London, Hewlett, Bishop of Willesden, and a number of others. In the late forties of the last century polio was becoming fashionable again in New Zealand, and I foolishly succumbed. For three or four years thereafter I wore callipers, but even so I have never really been all that steady on my feet, even when sober. Thus kneeling down before a rather large bishop on a very small ledge was somewhat alarming. Would I do an Otto Klemperer and fall backwards off the podium? Would my ordination on the top of a box be the immediate precursor to my funeral inside one? Only quick action by the bishop of Willesden prevented it. But I fear that before long he may well have wondered why he bothered.

What's in a name?

I've given this blog the rather odd title it has for three (to my mind) good reasons. Firstly, because I thought nobody else would have pinched it already; secondly, because I think it looks rather nice (and even sounds OK when you say it out loud); and thirdly, because it indicates something of the religious position I occupy, clinging to the good ship Canterbury while dipping the occasional toe into the swirling waters of both the Tiber and the Bosphorus, not to mention the rivers of Mesopotamia and further east.

Partly this is due to the fact that the good ship Canterbury needs to go into dry dock before it runs aground, and partly because I really like and appreciate the spiritual and liturgical traditions of the historic Churches of Christendom - both before and after their various splits and schisms. Along with Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor and Edward King, I also appreciate greatly Isaac the Syrian, Philip Neri, Francis de Sales, and Seraphim of Sarov. In other words, somewhat like the Gallicans, I am a conciliarist. I most certainly like and appreciate the spiritual and liturgical traditions of the Church of Rome, but to my mind, Pio Nono and the first Vatican Council should never have happened. Like St Francis de Sales, I believe general councils (real ones) to be superior to popes. In this I tag along gratefully behind the Eastern Churches, even as I appreciate their profound spiritual depth and their suspicion of Augustine. But I need to sit down from time to time, even in Church!

I love the Anglican tradition, indeed, I even love the Book of Common Prayer - a terrible admission for an Anglo-Catholic to make (although I must confess to preferring the Scottish to the English variety). I like the English Missal too, so I could almost paraphrase Noel Coward: 'Despite temptations to belong to other denominations ... ' Anglicans are often accused of being 'wishy-washy' but that seems to me a considerable improvement on small-minded certainty, so a Gallican Anglican I am, and (reasonably) proud of it!

In the beginning ...

Beginning a blog is something I have thought about for some time, but never quite managed to do. I'm only doing it now because I have been reading other people's blogs and have been shamed into realising that if they can do it, so can I. What's more, being the opinionated type, the opportunity to share my views (not to mention my prejudices) with a wider audience seems too good to miss. So watch this space - through your fingers, if necessary!