En del av liturgireformen etter konsilet bygger på feil premisser

Katolsk, Liturgi, Teologi /

Med denne overskrifta sikter jeg spesielt til messens (Novus Ordo) andre eukaristiske bønn, den skulle visstnok bygge på en romersk eukaristisk bønn fra 200-tallet, funnet i skriftet Den apostoliske tradisjon, og være skrevet av en prest som heter Hippolytus. Men de siste 15-20 år har man forstått at dette faktisk ikke er tilfelle. Den kjente liturgen/ teologen John F. Baldovin, S.J. (som ikke er spesielt konservativ) skrev i 2003 om dette i tidsskriftet Theological Studies, Nr. 64 – og jeg leste artikkelen i går. Fr Baldovin skriver bl.a.:

When I was a student, the commonly accepted opinion on the Apostolic Tradition ran something like this: Here we have a church order that gives us data on important ecclesiastical practices from the early-third century. The writer was a presbyter/theologian, named Hippolytus, who opposed Bishop Callistus of Rome over the latter’s laxity in readmitting sinners to church fellowship. He thus became a schismatic anti-pope, but was reconciled before his death as a martyr. A conservative, he advocated ancient usages of the Church. A crusty old parish priest unwilling to abide by his bishop’s liturgical innovations, he set down in a single document these rather antiquarian rules for liturgy and church conduct.

Nothing about this synthesis is correct. The title of the document in question is not the Apostolic Tradition. It cannot be attributed to Hippolytus, an author whose corpus of biblical commentaries and anti-heretical treatises is somewhat well known. As a matter of fact it is even doubtful whether the corpus of that writer can actually be attributed to a single writer. Finally, the document does not give us certain information about the liturgical practice of the early-third-century Roman Church.

Why then is it important to revisit the document? The importance of the so-called Apostolic Tradition consists mainly in its use by modern students in constructing the early history of the liturgy, and its use as the foundation of contemporary liturgical practice. Three examples will suffice: (1) The Second Eucharistic Prayer of the post-Vatican II Roman Rite (not to mention similar prayers used by a number of Anglican and Protestant churches) finds its inspiration in the anaphora given in chapter four of the Apostolic Tradition. (2) The ordination prayers of the Roman Rite have been influenced by the document. And (3), as a colleague once put it, the Roman Catholic adult catechumenate would never have taken its present shape without the framework provided by Hippolytus.

How, then, did we arrive at this false synthesis known as the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome and what can we say today about the putative author and provenance of the document? …

Dette er en lærd artikkel på 23 sider, med svært mange fotnoter, så jeg må hoppe over det meste og bare ta med meg Fr Baldovins avslutning:

(1) The first conclusion is obvious, namely that, in its present state, the document commonly but probably mistakenly referred to as the Apostolic Tradition does not represent the state of affairs in the Church at Rome in the early-third century. While Rome cannot be completely ruled out as one of the places that the document originated, it seems far more likely that it was “born” in the East, perhaps even Alexandria …

(2) One can speak only cautiously of authorship of a document that consists of church regulations. It is a piece of “living literature.” At the most, one can say that there are some phrases that point to the compilers’ familiarity with the work attributed to the Hippolytus of the Contra Noetum and that some elements in the document have a second-century origin.

(3) The current state of research favors a picture of church order and ministerial structure in transition, if not necessarily at Rome, then perhaps in various churches of the third century.

(4) There is a very real possibility that the Apostolic Tradition describes liturgies that never existed. A fortiori, great caution must be employed in appealing to this document to justify contemporary rites. …

(5) Many doubts have been expressed here, and many questions left open. Even if the liturgies described in the so-called Apostolic Tradition never existed in practice, they have had a major impact on the subsequent history of liturgical practice especially and perhaps even ironically in the West. The document addressed in this study has shaped the contemporary liturgies of initiation, ordination, and Eucharist. Of this there can be no doubt at all.

Les hele artikkelen her.

Jeg leste også en artikkel Paul F. Bradshaw skriver om samme emne: Liturgy in the Absence of Hippolytus

Kardinal Pell i hardt vær – gamle overgrepssaker

Generelt, Katolsk /

Den katolske Kirke har ennå ikke blitt ferdig med overgrepssakene, selv om det nå er 15 år siden oppvasken for alvor begynte i USA og enkelte andre land. Jeg forstår at det fortsatt pågårrettssaker i enkelte bispedømmer i USA, og nylig var det en stor høring i Australia, der kardinal Pell ble intervjuet ganske så grundig. John Allen skriver om dette, bl.a.:

… Pell, the Vatican’s top financial officer, was giving testimony about his response to abuse cases in the city of Ballarat, where his priestly career began and which has been an epicenter of Australia’s abuse scandals, and also about his time as archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001. He appeared via a video link from Rome, after a heart condition made the long flight home inadvisable.

The four-day hearing was not a walk in the park, and Pell undeniably took some hits.

Over and over, he insisted he was not aware of what he conceded was a “world of crimes and cover-ups” regarding pedophile priests, that he, too, had been deceived, and that at most he was guilty of being insufficiently curious. …

… Yet against all odds, there are five ways in which Pell actually may emerge in a stronger position from this experience.

First, the lengthy examination failed to produce any new “smoking gun” proving that Pell had direct knowledge of abuse and covered it up. He did admit to one instance in 1974 of being told by a student that a priest at a local school was “misbehaving with boys,” but said the student did not request action.

If there was such a bombshell, this surely would have been the moment in which it emerged.

By the end, the main charge seemed to pivot not on what Pell knew, but what he should have known — not what he did, but what he should have done. Those are serious questions, but there was no suggestion of any act that would rise to the standard of a crime, and the same questions could be asked of virtually anyone else who was in Ballarat at the time.

Second, Pell went through the strenuous process without complaint, agreeing to testify from 10 p.m. every night in Rome until 2 or 3 a.m. He was under no legal obligation to do so, which makes his cooperation meaningful.

Third, at the end Pell met with several of the 15-20 abuse survivors, relatives, and supporters who flew over from Australia for the hearing, with at least some coming away striking positive notes.

“I think he gets it,” said survivor Phil Nagle, who was abused by a priest in Ballarat while Pell was the vicar for education. “We talked about the future, not the past,” Nagle said. “We talked about compensation, about care, about what the future will be for us survivors and how the Church is going to help out from George’s level down.” That implies that Nagle sees a role for Pell as part of the solution, not just the problem.

Fourth, Pell pledged his support for the survivors and for recovery efforts from the abuse scandals, including offering to help create an Australian research center for abuse prevention and detection.

Fifth, at the end of the hearing, Pell did not use comments to journalists to issue laments about the unfairness of it all or to suggest that he’s some kind of martyr. …

Bøker av Os Guinness som betydde mye for meg

Apologetikk, Generelt /

Jeg skrev nettopp om en bok jeg har kjøpt av Os Guinness. Her er tre viktige bøker jeg leste av samme forfatter mellom 1975 og 1985:

guinness_in_two_minds

Boka In Two Minds kom ut i 1976, og jeg fikk tak i den ganske raskt og leste den med stor interesse. Boka handler om hva man gjør når man begynner åtvile – på den kristne tro, eller andre ting – man flykter ikke fra tvilen,og undertrykker den ikke. Man bør møte tvilen med åpne øyne, finne informasjon, be om råd- for å finne ut hva somer sant. Amazon skriver bl.a. dette om boka:

The author describes the purpose of his book: «Well, I myself didn’t have a lot of the doubts described in the book, but I met so many people who were either ashamed, embarrassed, or felt guilty about doubting. And I wanted to relieve them of that. Doubt is not the same as unbelief. You have faith in Christ, which is sure of Christ, and you have unbelief which, sadly, is not sure of Christ. And doubt is a halfway house. And all the languages of the world as well as the Scriptures had this idea of doubt in two minds. So like a coin spinning it will come down heads or tails. It has got to be resolved, but you don’t need to feel bad about doubt. You just need to resolve it.» – «We do not trust God because he guides us; we trust and then are guided, which means that we can trust God even when we do not see guided by him. Faith may be in the dark about guidance, but it is never in the dark about God» (p. 261). In fact, «God proves not only better to us than our worst fears but better to us than our wildest dreams» (p. 184). In fact, how we handle doubt is largely a reflection of the health of our faith because «since the object of Christian faith is God, to believe or disbelieve is everything. Thus the market value of doubt for the Christian is extremely high. Find out how seriously a believer takes his doubts and you have the index of how seriously he takes his faith» (p. 31).

guinness_dust_of_death_2 Boka The Dust of Death leste jeg på slutten av 70-tallet, og den gir en god oversikt over alle religionene og -ismene som hadde kommet til vesten på 60-tallet. Amazon skriver bl.a. slik om boka:

In the immediate aftermath of the 1960s, Guinness writes in the Preface that «what we were witnessing … was the gradual disillusionment of a generation, even of a culture. Ideals had grown so distant they were barely distinguishable from illusions. … In more than one hundred sections (!) with provocative chapter titles such as «The Striptease of Humanism,» «The Twilight of Western Thought,» «The Importance of Futurology,» «The Angry Young Men,» «The Psychedelics and God,» and «Constructive Christian Radicalism,» Guinness attempts a wide-ranging analysis of modern culture, proposing in the end Christianity: «this uniquely ‘impossible’ faith—with a God who is, with an Incarnation that is earthly and historical, with a salvation that is at cross-purposes with human nature, with a Resurrection that blasts apart the finality of death—is able to provide an alternative to the sifting, settling dust of death and through a new birth open the way to new life.»

guinness_gravedigger_file_2 Boka The Gravedigger File var kanskje ikke så viktig for meg, men den peker på en del problemer som den moderne kristenheten har. Amazon skriver bl.a. slik om den:

Os Guinness, in this work, presents the Church in America and the problems that beset it. All written in a series of communiques from the enemy «Directorate.» It has the same feel of The Screwtape Letters, and a fascinating idea of the way of the «Third Fool» as being the way to break through the present-day irrelevance, bickering, factionalism, marketing, and paranoia that are strangling the lifeblood out of the Church in America.

Klauser: A Short History of the Western Liturgy

Liturgi /

klauser_western_liturgy Jeg leser i dag ferdig Theodor Klauser: A Short History of the Western Liturgy. Det er ei nokså kort bok (litt over 200 s) og en del av stoffet er godt kjent for meg, men han skriver bl.a. en del interessante ting om hvordan Tridentinerkonsilets liturgireformer ble gjennomført. På Amazon kan vi bl.a. lese dette om boka:

Dr. Klauser presents a classical interpretation of the changes and developments in the liturgy from the time of Christ to Vatican Council II. The work is divided into four periods which have become standard designations: from the Ascension of Jesus to Gregory the Great, «creative beginnings,» (30-590); from Gregory the Great to Gregory VII, «expansion under Franco-German preeminence,» (590-1073); from Gregory VII to the Council of Trent, «luxuriant growth,» (1073-1545); and from Trent to Vatican II, «unification and regulation,» (1545-1963). Each period is introduced with a concise summary followed by Dr. Klauser’s discussion.

Her kan man lese et svært grundig referat av boka.

Boka kom ut i 1965, og er langt på vei preget av de overoptimistiske forsøkene på å reformere liturgien. Klauser mener bl.a. at den gamle messen som den nye eukaristiske bønn II bygger, på virkelig går tilbake til Roma og til Hippolytus. Jeg er derimot blitt overbevist om at det ikke er tilfelle, slik Wikipedia kortfattet uttrykker det:

… In recent scholarship, it has been suggested that the attribution to Hippolytus (is incorrect) and suggests that the Apostolic Tradition is a composite work modified over the centuries. According to this view, the anaphora probably attained its final form around the mid of the 4th century AD and it shall not to be related to Rome but to West Syria or even to Egypt. Some scholars also suggest that the Apostolic Tradition portrays a liturgy that was never celebrated. …

Dette blir grundigere diskutert av Paul Bradshaw og av John Baldovin, S.J.

Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

Apologetikk, Generelt /

guinness_fools_talk Os Guinness er en av personene knyttet til Francis Schaffer (som jeg skrev om i går) som betydde aller mest for meg – riktig nok mest for en del år siden. Han skrev i fjor ei bok jeg nå har kjøpt (i Kindle format): Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion.

På Amazon kan vi lese følgende om boka:

In our post-Christian context, public life has become markedly more secular and private life infinitely more diverse. Yet many Christians still rely on cookie-cutter approaches to evangelism and apologetics. Most of these methods assume that people are open, interested and needy for spiritual insight when increasingly most people are not. Our urgent need, then, is the capacity to persuade—to make a convincing case for the gospel to people who are not interested in it.

In his magnum opus, Os Guinness offers a comprehensive presentation of the art and power of creative persuasion. Christians have often relied on proclaiming and preaching, protesting and picketing. But we are strikingly weak in persuasion—the ability to talk to people who are closed to what we are saying. Actual persuasion requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. Guinness notes, «Jesus never spoke to two people the same way, and neither should we.»

Following the tradition of Erasmus, Pascal, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Malcolm Muggeridge and Peter Berger, Guinness demonstrates how apologetic persuasion requires both the rational and the imaginative. Persuasion is subversive, turning the tables on listeners’ assumptions to surprise them with signals of transcendence and the credibility of the gospel.

This book is the fruit of forty years of thinking, honed in countless talks and discussions at many of the leading universities and intellectual centers of the world. Discover afresh the persuasive power of Christian witness from one of the leading apologists and thinkers of our era.

Boka har fått flere priser, bl.a. hos Christianity Today. Og her intervjues Os Guinness om boka.

Francis Schaeffer: Skjebnetime

Apologetikk, Generelt /

skjebnetime Jeg ble for noen få dager siden kontaktet ang en mulig nyutgivelse av Francis Schaeffers bok Skjebnetime, som jeg oversatte til norsk i 1985. Francis Schaeffer og hans arbeid på L’Abri betydde mye for meg i mange år, og da jeg ble kontaktet om boka, dukket mange gamle minner opp (jeg møtte bl.a. min kone på L’Abri i Sveits i 1985). Tidligere i dag leste jeg bl.a. om en debatt om Francis Schaeffer i Norge i 2011 – se her.

Boka ble visst utgitt på nytt i 2010, men når er visst også denne utgaven utsolgt. Slik skrev jeg i mars 2007, da jeg la denne boka ut på nett – HER:

Vinteren 1985 arbeidet jeg med å oversette denne boka – «The Great Evangelical Disaster» – av Francis Schaeffer fra engelsk til norsk. Boka kom ut på norsk i 1986 under navnet “Skjebnetime”, og det er nå mange år siden den har vært mulig å få kjøpt.

Boka var skrevet av Francis Schaeffer i 1984, en amerikaner som startet et kristent studiesenter i Sveits, L’Abri – og som i mine unge år var viktig for min teologiske og intellektuelle utvikling. Jeg leste alle de 20 bøkene han nevner i forordet på slutten av 70-tallet

Jeg har sett på boka igjen nå, og den tar egentlig opp svært aktuelle spørsmål om normoppløsningen i vår tid, og hvordan kristne kirker og enkeltpersoner skal kunne stå fast på Kirkens gamle syn.

Jeg er selv blitt katolikk siden jeg oversatte boka, og vil derfor naturlig nok ikke dele Schaeffers syn på f.eks. reformasjonen, men det er fortsatt mange ting i denne boka som jeg vurdere som svært nyttige og viktige.

Hele boka kan leses her.

Tilbake i Oslo om to uker

Generelt /

Jeg har nå stort sett vært bortreist siden midten av oktober, bare avbrutt av to korte opphold i Oslo. Til sammen vil jeg være borte litt over fem måneder, av disse er det fire måneder (ulønnet) studiepermisjon og fem uker ferie (fra 2015 og 2016). Forrige helg var nokså feriepreget, siden det var min kones fødselsdag og store deler av hennes familie bor her i Oregon – vi feiret henne fire hele dager til ende.

Nå har vi ca 10 dager der jeg skal ha min ‘leseinnspurt’; det er fortsatt 3-4 liturgiske bøker jeg skal lese, i tillegg til de ca 30 jeg allerede har lest (og stort sett skrevet om her på bloggen). Vi reiser om knapt to uker hjem via Island (Icelandair fra Seattle) og da stopper vi der i to dager på vei hjem til Oslo. Og så er denne (sannsynligvis) siste studiepermisjonen over – det var 10 år siden jeg sist hadde seks måneder til studier, og før det noen måneder tidlig på 90-tallet – og jeg kommer hjem til Oslo og til arbeidet i menigheten.

Lest ferdig The Shape of the Liturgy

Liturgi /

shape_of_liturgy Jeg har nå lest ferdig den ganske berømte The Shape of the Liturgy, av Dom Gregory Dix, og er faktisk ikke så veldig fornøyd med boka.

Jeg syntes faktisk han var ganske preget av det man kaller arkeologisme, som pave Pius XII fordømte på 50-tallet, men som en del liturger likevel var og er påvirket av. F.eks. tenker Dix seg at på 100- og 200-tallet – da han mener at ordets gudstjeneste (synaxi) og eukaristien ble feiret separat – kunne søndagens eukaristi tidlig om morgenen var kanskje ikke mer enn 20 minutter, og være et nokså typisk måltidsfellesskap (selv om offertanken også var med). Preken (og bibellesninger) skulle altså holdes på et annet tidspunkt, men det har jeg nok litt vanskelig for å se for meg. Dix mener også at alterets posisjon fram til ca 700 var at biskopen/presten var vendt mot folket (men han skriver litt om dette emnet).

I det hele tatt er Dix nesten bare opptatt av det som skjedde fra til år 600 – selv om han skriver litt om forandringene rundt år 800 (med Karl den store) og enda mindre om utviklingen senere i middelalderen – og det han skriver om de første århundrene i øst og vest virker ganske spekulativt.

En ganske grundig anmeldelse av boka skriver bl.a.:

… Later scholarship has considered Dix to be near the mark but not always on it. For example, Dix argued that the Eucharistic Prayer grew out of a solemn three-part Jewish prayer, the Birkat ha-Mazon, or blessing after a meal, and, in particular, out of its second paragraph of “thanksgivings.” More recent liturgical scholarship has sought its origin in all three paragraphs of this ancient prayer, which, however, did not harden into prescribed forms among the Jews until the end of the first Christian millennium. This makes it difficult to reconstruct more than an outline of the original prayer. At best, it can be summarized as blessing-thanksgiving-supplication, and modern scholarship has criticized Dix for assuming, in a Jewish prayer context, the equivalence of blessing (Hebrew, berakah) and thanksgiving (Hebrew, yadah).

Dix also assumed, following late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German scholarship, that in the early Church the celebrant of the Eucharistic liturgy faced the congregation over the altar. The popularity of his book did a great deal to foster that practice among Anglicans and certain “catholicizing” clergy and congregations among Protestants such as Lutherans and Methodists.

It may have had a similar effect on Roman Catholics in laying the groundwork for the “reversal of the altars” that swept like a tidal wave over the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church from 1965 onwards. But this was more likely due to the influence of German and French liturgical institutes (most of whose “experts” were “popularizers” of liturgical scholarship rather than scholars themselves). Also, the view that “facing the people” was the “primitive practice” had been enshrined in the English-speaking world in The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913, and had come to be regarded as historical fact.

However, this view is now acknowledged to be mistaken by most contemporary liturgical scholars: The universal early Christian practice of facing east for prayer applied also, and especially, during the celebration of the Eucharist. ….

…. Some have marveled at how much he was able to do by way of digestion, assimilation, and “regurgitation” under highly adverse conditions, even if at some haste. So his scholarship has been characterized as brilliant but at the same time “erratic” or even “slipshod.”

Les hele denne anmeldelsen her.

Preken i requiemmessen til høyesterettsdommer Antonin Scalia

Generelt, Katolsk /

funeral_scalia

First Things gjengir her hele preken til Fr Paul Scalia, som han holdt i sin fars begravelse for noen dager siden

We are gathered here because of one man. A man known personally to many of us, known only by reputation to even more; a man loved by many, scorned by others; a man known for great controversy, and for great compassion. That man, of course, is Jesus of Nazareth.

It is He Whom we proclaim: Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, buried, risen, seated at the right hand of the Father. It is because of Him, because of His life, death and resurrection that we do not mourn as those who have no hope, but in confidence we commend Antonin Scalia to the mercy of God.

Scripture says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. And that sets a good course for our thoughts and our prayers here today. In effect, we look in three directions: to yesterday, in thanksgiving; to today, in petition; and into eternity with hope.

We look to Jesus Christ yesterday—that is, to the past—in thanksgiving for the blessings God bestowed upon Dad. In the past week, many have recounted what Dad did for them, but here today, we recount what God did for Dad; how He blessed him. We give thanks, first of all, for the atoning death and life-giving resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our Lord died and rose not only for all of us, but also for each of us. And at this time we look to that yesterday of His death and His resurrection, and we give thanks that He died and rose for Dad. Further, we give thanks that Jesus brought him to new life in Baptism, nourished him with the Eucharist, and healed him in the confessional. We give thanks that Jesus bestowed upon him 55 years of marriage to the woman he loved—a woman who could match him at every step, and even hold him accountable.

God blessed Dad with a deep Catholic faith—the conviction that Christ’s presence and power continue in the world today through his Body, the Church. …..

The New York Times skriver også om denne begravelsen, bl.a.:

The nation’s leaders, including justices, judges, lawmakers, current and former vice presidents and a presidential candidate, gathered for a mostly solemn two-hour funeral Mass. The longest-serving member of the current Supreme Court, Justice Scalia died at age 79 last weekend at a Texas ranch after nearly 30 years on the highest bench. …

The Shape of the Liturgy

Liturgi /

shape_of_liturgy Jeg er nå i gang men en kjent «murstein» (750 sider), nemlig The Shape of the Liturgy, av Dom Gregory Dix – utgitt i 1945, men i ny utgave (med ny innledning) fra 2005. Amazon skriver om boka:

Dom Gregory Dix’s classic account of the development of the Eucharist rite continues to be the definitive and authoritative work on the subject. He presents his massive scholarship in lively and non technical language for all who wish to understand their worship in terms of the framework from which it has evolved. He demonstrates the creative force of Christianity over the centuries through liturgy and the societies it has moulded. His great work has for nearly fifty years regularly been quoted for its devotional as well as its historical value, and has regularly attracted new readers. In this book for the first time, critical studies in the learned periodicals of many countries have been carefully sifted and the results arranged to give a clear picture of the development of the Eucharistic rite.

Her er innholdsfortegelsen:

Introduction. The Purpose of this Essay
I. The Liturgy and the Eucharistic Action
II. The Performance of the Liturgy
III. the Classical Shape of the Liturgy – I
IV. Eucharist and Lord’s Supper
V. The Classical Shape of the Liturgy – II
VI. The Pre-Nicene Background of the Liturgy
VII. The Eucharistic Prayer
VIII. Behind the Local Traditions
IX. The Meaning of the Eucharist
X. The Theology of Consecration
XI. The Sanctification of Time
XII. The Development of Ceremonial
XIII. The Completion of the Shape of the Liturgy
XIV. Variable Prayers at the Eucharist
XV. The Mediaeval Development
XVI. The Reformation and the Anglican Liturgy
XVII. ‘Throughout All Ages, World Without End’
Index

The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History

Liturgi /

liturgy_medieval_england_l Jeg har nå lest ferdig denne boka, som forfatteren, Richard W. Pfaff, i forordet skriver kanskje heller burde ha blit kalt The Liturgical Books of Medieval England, eller enda bedre (men for langt) The Liturgy in Medieval England: An Essay on the History of Medieval England as seen through Liturgical Sources.

Boka handlet nok for mye om utallige manuskripter etter min smak, og enkelte av detaljene må jeg innrømme jeg leste ganske raskt. Boka (som er på 575 sider) er delvis historisk, delvis går den gjennom liturgiene til de ulike religiøse ordenene i England, og mot slutten også de ulike regionale liturgiene, som Sarum (Salisbury), York, Hereford, Lincoln og et par til. Sarum er den mest kjente liturgien/ messerordningen, som etter hvert kom til å dominere det meste av England.

Fra en annen kilde kan vi lese om rubrikkene i Susrum-messen (i tillegg skriver Pfaff også en del om forskjellige tekster og helgenkalendere i de ulike tradisjonene):

The following are the more noticeable variants of the Use of Sarum from the developed Roman Rite:

At Mass, as in the Dominican Use, the Sarum priest began by saying a verse of the psalm «Confitemini,» with a shortened Confiteor followed by the verse «Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.» Nevertheless, at Salisbury every celebrant was bound to have recited the whole psalm «Judica me Deus» in the sacristy before coming to the foot of the altar. The prayer «Aufer a nobis» was said, but not that which now follows it, in lieu of which the priest simply made the sign of the cross and proceeded to read the Officium, or as we call it, the Introit.

From the Kyrie to the Offertory the deviations from our actual usage are slight, though on festival days this section of the sacred rite was often enormously lengthened by varied and prolix sequences. Like the Dominican and other contemporaneous Uses, that of Sarum supposes the previous preparation of the chalice (put by the Sarum Missal between the Epistle and Gospel) and thereby materially abbreviates the Offertory ceremonial.

According to an archaic usage, still familiar to ourselves from the Roman Good-Friday Rite, the prayer «In spiritu humilitatis» followed in place of preceding the washing of the priest’s hands and the psalm «Lavabo» was omitted. To the «Orate Fratres» (at Sarum, «Orate Fratres et Sorores») no audible response was made.

From the Preface onward through the Canon, the Sarum Mass was word for word and gesture by gesture that of our own Missals, except that a profound inclination of head and shoulders took the place of the modern genuflection and that during the first prayer after the Elevation the celebrant stood with arms stretched out in the form of a cross. As in France and generally in Northern and Western Europe the Benediction given at the breaking of the Sacred Host was not curtailed to the mere pronouncing of the words «Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum» but, more particularly when a bishop officiated, was very solemnly given with a formula varying according to the festival.

The prayers before the priest’s Communion were other than those with which we are familiar. The kiss of peace was given as with us but there was no «Domine non sum dignus.» The words pronounced by the celebrant at the moment of his own Communion are striking and seem peculiar to the Sarum Missal. They may therefore be fittingly quoted: «Hail for evermore, Thou most holy Flesh of Christ; sweet to me before and beyond all things beside. To me a sinner may the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ be the Way and the Life.» The Communion and Postcommunion followed as now. But no Blessing was given, and the beginning of the Gospel of St. John was recited by the priest on his way from the sanctuary to the sacristy.

Bok om Gregory Dix

Liturgi /

tactful_god_g_dix Jeg leste i dag ferdig booka A Tactful God av by Simon Bailey, og den beskriver livet og det liturgiske arbeidet til Dom Gregory Dix, den kjente anglikanske (anglo-katolske) liturgieksperten. (Jeg har hans svært kjente bok, The Shape of the Liturgy med meg på dette studieoppholdet, og skal lese (i alle fall deler av) de 750 sidene om ikke lenge.)

Amazon skriver bl.a. følgende om boka:

Dom Gregory Dix is perhaps the most influential liturgical historian of the 20th century. To quote the jacket, «The publication of the Shape of the Liturgy proved a watershed in English speaking liturgical writing. Whilst it was the culmination of the scholarship and spirituality of the Anglican monk-writer Dom Gregory Dix, it was only the best example of a wide and important output. Drawing on original correspondence and notebooks, Simon Bailey provides a balanced assessment of Dix the monk, scholar and pastor, and charts his involvement with the papist Anglo-Catholicism of the interwar years…»

If you have any interest in liturgical studies, this book will prove an fun footnote to one of the leaders in the field.

Og HER er en grundig omtale av boka.

The Oregon Coast

Generelt /

16febr_oregon_coast
Nå har vi bodd ei uke i en leilighet i Lincoln City på den ganske berømte Oregon Coast – det er fint her, men ikke særlig varmt (10-12 grader) som bildet viser. Forrige helg hadde vi familiebesøk (fra min kones familie) lørdag, søndag, mandag, siden har vi studert ganske mye og gått på stranda. Kommende helg skal vi også treffe familiemedlemmer tre dager (det var hovedgrunnen til at vi kom hit), og så blir det igjen tid til studier de neste ukedagene.

Det er litt underlig å være 9 timer etter Norge tidsmessig, for selv om vi står opp tidlig (før 6) er folk i Norge da på vei hjem fra jobb – og jeg leser Aftenposten og Vårt Land for neste dag hver ettermiddag. Jeg har vært i Oregon mange ganger før (vi gifta oss her for litt over 30 år siden), men det har stort sett vært om sommeren og det har ofte ikke vært mer enn to uker, og nå skal vi være her akkurat fem uker.

Sherborne Missal

Generelt, Liturgi /

Sherborne_missal_pp_17-18

I The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History av Richard W. Pfaff, som jeg nå leser, leste jeg nettopp – i kapittelet om Benedictine liturgy after 1215 – om the Sherborne Missal. Sherborne was ( a Benedictine abbey from 998 to 1539.)

Richard Pfaff skriver (s 236-237) om denne missalen: «Sherborne seems to have been an abbey of medium size (15-20 men) and income … In these circumstances it becomes all the more astonishing that, probably between 1396 and 1406, there should have been commissioned, and illustrated by a prominent artist, the missal that … «is the unrivalled masterpiece of English book production in the fifteenth century».»

Etter at alle kloster ble oppløst av kongen (Sherborne i 1539), vet man lite om missalen, men den var i Frankrike «from at least 1703 to 1797, then (by 1800) in the posession of the Duke of Northumberland, who kept it at Alnwick castle until 1983, when Trustees of the then Duke placed it on indefinite loan at the British Library; in 1998 the Library bought it.»

Bildet under viser korsfestelsen, og er den eneste helsides miniatyren i missalen.

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Hva er igjen hvis vi ikke har liturgien?

Katolsk, Liturgi /

Erkebiskop Alexander Sample i Portland, Oregon (der jeg er nå) er nettopp blitt intervjuet, både om erkebispedømmet (i et av de mest kirkeløse delene av USA), om bispesynoden og om liturgien. Om det siste emnet sier han:

The Church teaches us that the liturgy is the “source and summit” of the Church’s life [in Sacrosanctum Concilium]. There is nothing more important that the Church does. All our apostolic works flow from it. It is the heart of who we are as the body of Christ.

I had the pleasure of attending a general audience with Pope Benedict. As a bishop, I had the opportunity to greet him personally afterward. In the few moments I had with him, I told him I had a great admiration for what he’d done to renew the sacred liturgy and thanked him for his leadership. He responded, “If we don’t have the liturgy, what do we have?” I took that message to heart.

I want to do what the Church wants us to do in regards to liturgy. It is not my take, or my style, but what the Church is asking of us. I want to be faithful to what the Vatican II Council intended.

The liturgy is not the personal possession of any priest or liturgical commission, but belongs to Holy Mother Church. We must celebrate it according to the mind and heart of the Church.

Videre sier han også:

I’m grateful to Pope Benedict for allowing the Extraordinary Form to flourish again in the Church. I have a great love and appreciation for the ancient liturgy. I wish every priest and seminarian would familiarize himself with the Extraordinary Form, which can help us to better understand the Ordinary Form.

Jeg leste om dette først hos Father Z.

Messefeiring i England i middelalderen

Katolsk, Liturgi /

liturgy_medieval_england
Jeg er nå i gang med å lese The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History av Richard W. Pfaff, det er ei bok på nesten 600 sider, som det vil ta litt tid å komme gjennom. Amazon skriver om boka:

This book provides a comprehensive historical treatment of the Latin liturgy in medieval England. Richard Pfaff constructs a history of the worship carried out in churches – cathedral, monastic, or parish – primarily through the surviving manuscripts of service books, and sets this within the context of the wider political, ecclesiastical, and cultural history of the period. The main focus is on the mass and daily office, treated both chronologically and by type, the liturgies of each religious order and each secular ‘use’ being studied individually. Furthermore, hagiographical and historiographical themes – respectively, which saints are prominent in a given witness and how the labors of scholars over the last century and a half have both furthered and, in some cases, impeded our understandings – are explored throughout. The book thus provides both a narrative account and a reference tool of permanent value.

Boka går gjennom den ene tidsepoken etter den andre, bl.a. disse:

Early Anglo-Saxon England: a partly traceable story
Later Anglo-Saxon: liturgy for England
The Norman Conquest: cross fertilizations
Monastic liturgy, 1100-1215
Benedictine liturgy after 1215
The non-monastic religious orders: canons regular
The non-monastic religious orders: friars
Old Sarum: the beginnings of Sarum Use
New Sarum and the spread of Sarum Use
Exeter: the fullness of secular liturgy
Southern England: final Sarum Use
Regional Uses and local variety
Towards the end of the story

Pave Frans i Mexico

Katolsk, Paven /

francis_mexico
John Allen skriver om dette besøket:

Upon arriving in Mexico, Francis clearly wanted to make four statements, and he underscored each with a symbolically fitting destination:

1 The importance of popular faith and devotion, which he highlighted Saturday with a Mass in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

2 The dignity of Latin America’s indigenous population, expressed on Monday by an outing to Chiapas, home to an armed Zapatista uprising fueled in part by a legacy of injustices directed at indigenous communities.

3 The indecency of the drug trade and drug-related violence, hammered home on Tuesday when the pontiff traveled to Morelia, a state in which scores of ordinary people and an estimated 40 Catholic priests have been killed by criminal gangs in the past decade.

4 The human dignity of immigrants, captured in the border stop on Wednesday.

Aides said Francis personally chose these destinations, and it’s hard to imagine an itinerary better reflecting his priorities. When the pope goes some place, a good chunk of the world’s media also travels with him, and it’s clear Francis wanted to exploit that spotlight.

Pave Frans snakket også til biskopene i Mexico, og om dette sier Allen:

In effect, what the Mexico trip underlined was the kind of bishop Francis wants. Key qualities include:

– A preference for ordinary people and the poor rather than elites.
– Close contact with social realities, including concrete humanitarian and charitable efforts.
– Political moderation and dialogue with all parties.
– Simplicity of lifestyle and approach.
– Personal integrity and a distaste for wheeling and dealing.
– Rejection of careerism; that is, a prelate who thinks more about this job than the next one.

Bok om Summorum Pontificum

Liturgi, TLM /

care_for_church_liturgy Jeg har nå lest ferdig boka Care for the Church and Its Liturgy: A Study of Summorum Pontificum and the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite av William H. Johnston, som ganske grundig og saklig gjør rede for pave Benedikts utvidelse av muligheten til å feire den tradisjonelle latinske messen. På Amazon kan vi lese om boka:

In July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum, designating two «uses» or «forms» of the Roman Rite, declaring the Missal of Paul VI to be the «ordinary form» and the 1962 Missal of John XXIII to be its «extraordinary form.» On the same day, the pope also published a letter to bishops, Con Grande Fiducia, to accompany and offer commentary on this motu proprio.

In Care for the Church and Its Liturgy, William H. Johnston offers analysis and commentary on both documents, exploring their meaning, context, purposes, implementation, and implications. Johnston carefully attends to the multiple purposes of the documents themselves and to the various questions related to their implementation, as well as to the complex postconciliar dynamics in the Catholic Church. His approach throughout is appreciative, critical, and constructive.

Johnston’s study embodies respect for dialogue, unity, and charity. It will provide much food for thought and discussion among both academics and pastoral leaders in the years ahead as the church discerns its liturgical way forward, and all those with educational or pastoral responsibility for the liturgy will find it an informative resource and valuable guide for understanding and assessing this still constitutive feature of the Roman Rite.

John Allen om møtet mellom paven og den russisk-ortodokse kirken

Katolsk, Økumenikk /

16feb_pave_patriark
John Allen skriver interessant og nøkternt om dette møtet som nylig ble avholdt på Cuba. Han uttrykker lede over at møtet mellom de to kirkelederne endelig skjedde, men fortsetter slik:

Alas, and without trying to rain on anyone’s parade, there are also good reasons for caution, in large part because Moscow’s motives — both in terms of the Russian church, and the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin — are open to serious doubt.

(The Russian Orthodox Church is a close ally of Putin, and most observers believe Friday’s meeting would not have happened without his encouragement.)

In recent decades, the Catholic Church has bent over backwards to improve relations with Moscow. Given fears that Catholics try to poach Orthodox worshipers, for instance, the Church in Russia has been under what amounts to a quiet “no-growth” policy. Pastors have received instructions that if a Russian seeks to convert, he or she should be sent back to an Orthodox congregation.

Yet despite a slew of similar accommodations, Russian Orthodox leaders still routinely exude hostility. ….

Han kommer med mange flere interessante observasjoner (les gjerne hele artikkelen) og avslutter slik:

Given all that, how will we know if Friday’s meeting was more than a photo-op?

First, the Russian Orthodox could stop making life difficult for other Christians in their sphere of influence, whether that means Greek Catholics in Ukraine or other Orthodox Christians who want to be independent (the term in the East is “autocephalous.”)

Second, Kirill could officially reject claims by arch-conservative traditionalists in his church that Catholic sacraments and ministries aren’t valid. Catholic experience shows doing so won’t make those folks go away, but it will at least prevent them from claiming they speak for the church.

Third, Orthodox clergy could stop providing religious cover for Putin’s imperial ambitions and establish genuine independence from state control.

Fourth, Pope Francis and the Vatican could make the preceding three steps a precondition for moving forward.

If those things occur, then Friday’s get-together will represent a sea change. Longtime observers, however, may be forgiven for not holding their breath.

Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square

Generelt, Katolsk /

neuhaus_biography I dag har jeg lest ferdig ei bok som kom ut for akkurat ett år siden: Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square Neuhaus har betydd mye for meg, helt siden 1991, da jeg begynte å lese det nystartede tidsskriftet First Things, og også hørte at (den tidligere lutherske>) Neuhaus kort tid før dette hadde blitt katolikk. (Jeg skrev litt om mitt forhold til Neuhaus den dagen han døde i januar 2009.)

Biografien ble anmeldt i mange aviser da den kom ut, New York Times skriver bl.a.:

At the time of his death six years ago, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus was arguably the most prominent conservative Roman Catholic in America. He was leader of the “theocons,” as critics labeled them, right-leaning Christian intellectuals grouped around First Things, a journal Neuhaus founded. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI knew him personally, as well as by his work, and George W. Bush sought Neuhaus’s counsel before and during his time as president. His 1984 book on the place of faith in politics, “The Naked Public Square,” has been credited with helping to define the climate in which Ronald Reagan won re-election.

Yet Neuhaus did not begin as a conservative, a Catholic or indeed in America. He was born and baptized the son of a Lutheran pastor in Pembroke, Ontario. Later, as a Lutheran pastor himself in New York, Neuhaus was an activist liberal — ally of Martin Luther King in the civil rights struggle, co-founder of Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam and antiwar delegate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Each half of Neuhaus’s life supplies ample material for a biography. …

… A man of the cloth as engaged in public life as Neuhaus was makes a difficult subject for a biography: The cavalcade of events threatens to overwhelm the spiritual side of his life. Boyagoda draws attention back to Neuhaus’s faith whenever he can, particularly in the moving final chapter, as Neuhaus approaches his death. But an adequate spiritual biography would have to be quite different from an account of a public life as full as the one Neuhaus’ led, and inevitably Boyagoda has to choose his focus. Here it is on the outward man, and Boyagoda has explored and explained this fascinating American as well as anyone could have hoped.

Les mer om denne boka her.

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