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!