Lady Thatcher

The news of the death of Lady Thatcher this morning is an event which will clearly not pass without numerous appraisals and assessments of her career and impact on the country. I too feel I should write something about the passing of this remarkable woman.

I know people who hold her in adulation, and others who hold her in abhorrence, and often for the same reasons and causes. She was always a politician to arouse passions, and that shows no signs of abating at this time.

Margaret Thatcher was the most significant Prime Minister since Attlee in shaping the direction of the national life, and the choices with which she is associated continue to form much of the agenda of British politics. Through what she did here she set an example for Europe and the wider world in the sphere of deregulation and reformulation. What had been an idea, or dismissed as a pipe-dream, became a political reality, one which others hastened to emulate.

It is tempting to say her death marks the end of an era, but that would not, I think, be accurate. The Thatcher era as such ended when she left Downing Street in November 1990 - an event that reflected no credit on those who bought her down - but we are still in the post-Thatcher era, and going to remain so for a considerable time.

In some ways she and her legacy were well summed up by a comment made to me in March 1993 by a Fellow of Oriel "Don;'t you think Mrs Thatcher was wonderful - not Thatcherism, but Mrs Thatcher herself." I think there is much truth in that - the personal phenomenon of the woman was splendid and remarkable, the attempt to make it in her later years as Prime Minister into a political philosophy less successful, and tending to a doctrinaire attitude that is not English, or Tory, or indeed, I suspect , true of the Iron Lady herself.

From the time she took the Conservative party by the scruff of the neck in early 1975, and then the    nation by the scruff of the neck in April 1979 she seemed for years invulnerable, a figure inspiring awe (and dislike with others).

It is easy now to forget what that confident articulation of Conservative ideas did to enthuse many of us, and how we responded to someone who energised our minds and energies. In the 1970s she gave many people hope and belief in improvement that had hitherto been lacking. Thinking back to the Falklands War of 1982 is to recall how the country, for the vast majority, felt a shared sense of commitment that would have seemed unlikely a few years earlier. That campaign was a truly remarkable achievement by all those who were involved.Britain was serious about where she stood as a nation one more, and the ideas that governed her ones that had to be taken seriously.

 

I always supported her in General Elections, and on the big points of her programme. Some things she did I  did not agree with, and recall feeling unsure in the 1987 election campaign at her press conference comment "There is no such thing as society" - I think I knew what she actually meant, but I heard what she said and what it sounded like. Indeed after that things did lose the elasticity of earlier years, became more doctrinaire, and more accident prone.

In1989-90 her reaction to the fall of the Communism she so fervently hated in central Europe seemed more muted than one would have expected and her doubts as to German re-unification oddly hesitant - she was perhaps too much a child of the generation that had lived through the Second World War.

I am not sure if she foresaw what would always be the result of her policies. Somehow I suspect she thought in terms of restoring life as it had been in pre-war Grantham in a more prosperous form. Espousing Freedom as her battle cry she perhaps did not always allow for how too many people will use that freedom in selfish and foolish ways.

Nor, from stories I have read and heard am I too sure about her grasp of the details of history, or the importance of the humanities...but I can live with that. No-one is perfect.

I have described her as a phenomenon, and that she was. It is rather trite, but nonetheless appropriate, to say that we are unlikely to see her like again. Margaret Thatcher may not in life have been until her declining years a woman given to rest, but may she now rest in peace.

The election of Pope Urban VI in 1378

Today is the 635th anniversary of the election of Bartolomeo Prignano, Archbishop of Bari, as Pope Urban VI in 1378. He was the last non-cardinal to date to be elected to the Papacy, and his election was to lead within months to the Great or Western Schism.

There is an illustrated online account of his life here and the online text of the Cathiolic Encyclopaedia, which can be read here, has a detailed account of the events surrounding his election on this day in 1378. Those events and the way in which they were recounted in the following months were to be central to the validity or otherwise of both Pope Urban's election and that of his intended replacement Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII in the late summer.

The change from being a reliable servant to being the Servant of ther Servants of God appears to have been too much of an adjustment for the new Pope to make, and it either released inner energies hitherto under tight control or, it has been suggested by some, unhinged him. It is clear that as Supreme Pontiff Pope Urban rapidly antagonised the Cardinals, and after their move against him during the Roman summer, he showed himself unrelenting and unforgiving in his dealings with their successors. The consequence was to be a divided church, and a divided Christendom, until the election of Pope Martin V in 1417, itself to be followed by the Conciliarist difficulties that threatened him and his successor Pope Eugenius IV until the election of Pope Nicholas V in 1447.

The tomb of Pope Urban VI in the Vatican

Image: madmonarchs.guusbeltman.nl

 

The effigy of the Pope on his tomb

Image:kids.britannica.com

Petrine commissision: St Peter gives the keys to Ppope Urban VI

Detail of the panel from the tomb 

Image:artandarchitecture.co.uk

There is more about the tomb and its history here.

The arms of Pope Urban VI

Image: Wikipedia

Divine Mercy Sunday

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday.  Although I have long been aware of the life of St Faustina and the form of devotion to the Divine Mercy this the first time I have managed to actually attend the afternoon observance of the day at the Oxford Oratory.

 

The Divine Mercy

Image: thebloggingbrother.blogspot

The sizeable congregation was drawn from across the city and deanery, and it was an excellent opportunity both to become more familiar with the ideas inherent in St Faustina's revelation and to participate in the blessing of the image, chaplet, 3.00 Prayer, Mass - for which I was recruited as a reader - and the adoration and prayer before the exposed Blessed Sacrament, concluding with Benediction. I was not alone in thinking the inclusion of Fr Faber's hymn "There's a wideness if God's mercy" particularly felicitous.

I definitely felt more drawn to the idea and awareness of the Divine Mercy - let 's be honest, we need to be - and I hope it will inform my own daily pattern of prayer and devotion. I would certainly recommend attending such an occasion for anyone seeking to learn more about what has become a widespread devotion in recent years.

Easter in Oxford

 The Resurrection 

Giovanni Bellini, 1479. Gemaldegalerie in Berlin

There is an insightful commentary on the painting here.

Image:andrewgrahamdixon.com

This year I was back at the Oxford Oratory for the Triduum - for the previous two Easters I had been asked to assist with the serving, and was indeed happy to do so, at SS Gregory and Augustine in the north of the city. However this year they were up to strength with servers, and I was not required.

As I mentioned in a previous post I had to be in London on Maundy Thursday, but I got back in good time so as to attend the Mass of the Lord's Supper and the pedelavium at the Oxford Oratory, and then took part in the vigil before the altar of repose which ended with the singing of Compline. For this there was a good number of people, and we sang it to a monastic chant that was particularly effective in the candlelit space of the chapel.

On Good Friday I went to the observance of Tenebrae at Blackfriars - the only one of the three days on which I was able to do so this year  - which is always both moving and striking. In the afternoon I was back at the Oratory for the Solemn Liturgy of the Passion - which was, of course, very well attended. Following a cup of tea at a nearby restaurant I was back for Stations of the Cross and for the blessing with a relic of the True Cross

Holy Saturday again found me busy in the day with a tour, this time  taking a group to Blenheim Palace in the morning, but I got back in time to go to Confession before eating and going back to the Oratory for the Easter Vigil. The building work on the new accomodation block had involved breaking up much of the surface of the forecourt to link to mains services, but this had now been refilled, and we were able to gather as usual around the Easter Fire for the lighting of the Pascal Candle and the procession into the church building. This  was full of worshippers and we had both a baptism and a reception into the Church. Afterwards some of us went for a celebratory drink after our Lenten abstinence

On Easter Day I went to the mid-morning Solemn Mass at the Oratory. The large congregation was augmented by visitors and the whole occasion suitable splendid, with the very best gold watered-silk vestments in use, and concluding - as is our custom - with a spirited rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus by the choir. Here from the Oratory website are some pictures of the Mass;

I had lunch with friend and a guest at a nearby restaurant before we went back to church for Solemn Vespers - always a grand affair with the choir singing responsively with the community, and concluding with Benediction.

This was followed by more secular celebrations - a meal with other friends in Headington, where our host entertained us  with venison, duck and lamb as well as plenty of alcohol to continue the sense of celebration.

Eight years in peace and full communion

Today is the eighth anniversary of my reception into full peace and communion with the Church, and I am following my practice from previous years and reproducing a piece I wrote in my early days of blogging about my reasons for so doing, and in the form I published it last year with some slight emendations and additions.

It was Thursday in the Octave of Easter 2005, and chosen because it enabled friends and relatives who would not have been able to attend at the Easter Vigil to be present and, in one case, to be my sponsor.

I took as my confirmation name Philip - not only the name of the founder of the Oratory and of an Apostle, but also my father's first name and one that I had always liked. So John Robert became John Robert Philip. I subsequently went to the not inconsiderable expense of adding the name by deed poll, so I can insist on officialdom recognising my spiritual journey.

As it happened, by being received when I was, I thereby became one of the very last Catholics to be received into the Church in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II - I feel I squeezed through the door of history in that respect. There are those converts who used to describe themselves as "John Paul II Catholics" or similar phrases. I am, by historic fact and by sympathy a "Benedict XVI Catholic", but, and it is a very important "but", I am a Catholic first - Popes inevitably come and go. That said I consider it an enormous good fortune for the Church and, for me as an individual member of it, to have had His Holiness in the Chair of Peter. His pontificate has been a great blessing for the whole church. Much of what we have already heard from Pope Francis indicates continuity on expressing the faith as his predecessor did, and in bringing a serious Christian awareness to the current social and economic ills of the world.

As I made my decision to seek reception I codified my ideas into nine categories or groups. St Edmund Campion had his Decem Rationes which he placed so provocatively in St Mary's Church in Oxford in 1581. Mine are more personal perhaps, but, in that they may interest others, here are my Novem Rationes of 2005:

1. I believed all that the Catholic Church believed - so why was I not in full communion with it? I read the Catechism through and found nothing from which to dissent within it.

2. In particular I accepted the claims of the Papacy and its necessity in order to maintain orthodoxy and unity.

3. As a historian I appreciated the Catholic case for the nature of the Church and the Papacy, and the fact of its historical continuity - Walter Ullman's point that the Papacy is the one institution that links the Apostolic age to the Atomic age reverberates in my mind.

4. The call to Unity - not only the principal of Ut unum sint but also the specific claims to expressing that unity with all other Catholics through the Holy See as described by the Fathers.

5. The Catholic Church was seen to act on issues contingent upon Christian belief - Life issues might be the most obvious, but there were others, and with an authentic response being made.

6. I realised that my historic sympathies were with Catholicism - which side would I have been on, or at least believed I would have been on or wanted to be on in say, the Reformation? Well it was clear. My heart lay with the Catholic cause.

7. The state of Anglicanism was not encouraging. For Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics the situation was one of increasing isolation, and the sense that a Third Province would not be granted.

8. Much as I loved my Anglican places of worship - Pusey House and St Thomas in Oxford - I felt that I was called to move on. I was at an age when I still could make a change, but that there was not time to delay. If this was the time, then so be it.

9. I thought that many of my Anglican friends were moving or would move into full communion with Rome. Those friendships, based and rooted in a shared spiritual life, were very important to my own spiritual development, and they were pointing all in the same direction.

Looking back from this point, seven years later, I have never had cause to regret my decision. There is no "seven year itch."

I still endorse those nine sets of ideas.

The last three invite some additional comments.

The Church of England has continued on its way, and has failed to have the generosity to provide for Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics. The issue of women bishops remains unresolved and even more divisive it would seem in the wake of alst november's failure to vote the matter through the General Synod.

Anglicanorum Coetibus has been issued - I pray it will be successful in extending the unity of the Church to others of like faith and mind outside its formal bounds. Since 2011 we have witnessed the establishment of the Ordinariate first in England and more recently in the USA. I have been able to help to support those joining it by acting as a pro-sponsor in two cases, or simply by turning up to support their Masses, and, of course, by praying for it.

Summorum Pontificum reasserted the right to have traditional forms of the liturgy and it has been followed by a strong and positive response, and that needs to be continued - as has been said what was sacred once is sacred now.

I am still on excellent terms with friends from Pusey House and St Thomas', and I rejoiced at Fr Hunwicke's appointment to the latter in 2007. It has been good to see all that is happening at both institutions for the Catholic cause. It was very good for my humility that they could manage and survive without me. I retain enormously happy memories of my time at both places and at the churches I worshipped at in Yorkshire before I came to Oxford.

Nonetheless I increasingly find it difficult to see why more people in the Anglo-Catholic tradition are not availing themselves of all - and it is so much - that is offered by the Ordinariate. It is all they have ever said they wanted or indeed hoped for - bar, possibly, taking their church buildings with them, and though I can sympathise to a great extent, but not to the exclusion of what ultimately matters.

As to my friends - well, I was the second of our group to make the move, and three more had followed by last year. In the last two years two more married couples, one with three children, from that set of friends have made that same move. Four of the men have either been ordained or are preparing for ordination.

Along the way I have made many other new friends amongst those converting, and I have been made very welcome in my new spiritual home. I am extremely lucky to have the Oratory and also SS Gregory and Augustine and Blackfriars as places in which to worship regularly here in Oxford.

A friend and I likened the process of conversion and reception not to swimming the Tiber, but to paddling across - when we reached the opposite bank we found friends waiting in the deck-chairs to hand one a towel to dry one's feet and then to hand you a missal or breviary to read as you sat down to watch who would be next to come over.

May St Philip Neri, Bl. John Henry Newman and all the saints continue to pray for me, and for those seeking their home in the Church.

He is Risen! Alleluia!

The Resurrection of Christ 

 El Greco

Image: raindeocampo

The Resurrection is an event without precedent or parallel, and difficult for artists to depict satisfactorily without producing a stage-like effect. However I think El Greco's blend of Mannerism and Greek sprituality with traditional Catholic forms does convey more successfully the dynamic force of what must have been the reality - realism is not enough for such a, literally, earth shattering and earth changing event.

A holy and joyful Easter to you all   

Imperial Maundy

The tradition of the mandatum was not confined to English kings - it survived as a practice in the Austrian Empire and in Spain during the reign of King Alfonso XIII.

" In 1850, Franz Joseph participated for the first time as Emperor in the second of the traditional Habsburg expressions of dynastic piety: the Holy Thursday foot-washing ceremony, part of the four-day court observance of Easter. The master of the staff and the court prelates chose twelve poor elderly men, transported them to the Hofburg, and positioned them in the ceremonial hall on a raised dais. There, before an invited audience observing the scene from tribunes, the Emperor served the men a symbolic meal and Archdukes cleared the dishes. As a priest read aloud in Latin the words of the New Testament (John 3:15), “And he began to wash the feet of the disciples,” Franz Joseph knelt and, without rising from his knees, washed the feet of the twelve old men in imitation of Christ. Finally, the Emperor placed a bag of twenty silver coins around the necks of each before the men were led away and returned to their homes in imperial coaches."

The Emperor washing the feet of the poor on Holy Thursday

A lithograph of circa 1910

From Daniel L. Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism: Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria 1848-1916 (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2005), p. 29.

Image and text: nobility.org March 7, 2011

A 1907 newspeper report says that thirty silver coins were given, but I am not sure if that is accurate.

In 1904 the ceremony was attended by Consuelo Duchess of Marlborough (1877-1964) who described it in her memoirs The Glitter and the Gold, published in 1953 and recently reprinted. The Vanderbilt heiress displays in her autobiography both a thoroughgoing pleasure in the privileges of her rank and an American edginess about such privileges, both of which are apparent in her account of the occasion:

[Text to be added]

Royal Maundy in Oxford

It was pretty typical of my luck that the year that the Queen holds the Royal Maundy service in Christ Church cathedral here in Oxford and then pays another visit to Oriel, of which she is Visitor, and where Her Majesty had lunch with the Fellows in Hall, I had to be in London all day, so I will have to be dependent on newspaper and internet reports of today's events.

This was the first time the Maundy ceremony had been conducted in Oxford cathedral since 1643 when King Charles I was residing in the college during the Civil War.

The history and development of the service can be read online here. My post from 2011 about the ceremony can be read at The Royal Maundy.

 

The Queen distributes the Maundy money purses in the cathedral

Image: ITV/Press Association

 

 The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh outside Christ Church Cathedral after the service.

Image:ITV/Steve Parsons/PA Wire

There is a good selection of photographs of today's events in the report in the Daily Mail which can be seen here and there is a report with more local detail from the Oxford student newspaper Cherwell here. 

There is a video link with film of the service in the report from the Daily Telegraph which can be viewed here.

Following the service in Christ Church the monarch and her consort travelled to Oriel for lunch with the Provost and Fellows. Oriel is the oldest royal foundation in either of the ancient universities  and the Sovereign is Visitor. So the founder King Edward II's twenty times over great grandaughter came to her  college today. The Oriel website has not yet got photographs available of the visit other than a masthead, but here is a photograph of Her Majesty leaving the college after lunch and looking both happy and in good health:

Image:oxforddailyphoto.blogspot