Jeg har nettopp lest ferdig Aidan Nichols’ bok The Latin Clerk – The Life, Work and Travels of Adrian Fortescue.
Og jeg opplevde det samme som en anmelder skriver:
«Aidan Nichols’ work rescues Fortescue from any suggestion of obsessive liturgical pedantry, and presents instead a compelling picture of an exemplary priest, a meticulous scholar and a lively, adventurous and humorous man. … Aidan Nichols’ work succeeds admirably in presenting a more rounded picture of Doctor Fortescue than the image that one has if one only knows him as the author of a ceremonial guide. Fortescue was the model of the priest scholar, comparatively uncommon then as now, and very much a man of his time, throwing himself into controversies and parish life with equal energy.»
Fortescue hadde studert ulike liturgiske tradisjoner gundig (bl.a. under en lang og dramatisk reise i Midt-Østen), var klar og presis i alt han tenkte og skrev, og hadde utviklet et eksemplarisk liturgisk liv i den lille kirken der han var sogneprest, men var ikke spesielt interessert i liturgiske spissfindigheter. Han skrev sin berømte bok «The ceremonies of the Roman rite described» mest for å få penger til menighetsarbeidet. (Jeg kjøpte og leste denne boka med stor interesse for tre år siden.)
Det overrasket meg også en hel del å lese at Fortescue hadde ganske store problemer med å underskrive Pave Pius Xs antimodernist-ed i 1910, noe en annen anmelder beskriver slik:
The biggest difficulty for Fortescue was to come: the taking of the anti-Modernist oath, required of priests in 1910. Modernism, as a hotch-potch of suspected heresy, had nothing to do with being modern. Indeed, as Fortescue mentioned in a letter to a friend, he’d have felt far more comfortable in the Dark Ages of the 10th century than in the modern Roman world of Pope Pius X (pictured).
Fortescue wrote to Herbert Thurston, a wise Jesuit priest, wondering what force the wording of the oath had. He might have balked at something about historical criticism of the Bible in the accompanying document Lamentabili. We don’t know. But, for all his tenderness of conscience, take the oath he did. …