Praxiteles

Forgive Praxiteles for sounding somewhat conspiratorial but it is getting hard to avoid the conclusion that there must be an international wreckers guide to tell vandals how to assuage public fears about acts of barbarism they are contemplating practising on their churches.

Remember the infinitley forgettable Denis Reidy – the real Goetterdaemerung behind the attempt to wreck Cobh Cathedral. Well, he came up with the absurd explanation that it was necessary to demolish the altar rails and dig out the floor so that you could see [what would be left] of the moasic on the sanctuary floor.

Well, believe it or not we have another version of this coming from Kaposvar in Hungary – from the other side of Christendom! The thing runs this way: a small village church in the middle of the Hungarian pusta has Mass celebrated there in June in the old rite by a newly ordained priest. Now it happens that the bishop of Kaposvar is a die in the wool hater of the usus antiquior. So, to prevent a repeat, he orders the demolition of the altar so that the picture above and behind it can be seen!! Are we to believe that it has not been seen since the regression of the Turks?

Here is the relevant link:

http://www.kreuz.net/article.5828.html

Praxiteles is sorry to have to report that the sacristy in Ballintotis HAS BEEN DEMOLISHED. Passing that way this afternoon, Praxiteles viewed the destruction at first hand. Although a protected structure, no planning application was lodged for the works going on there and Cork County Council has no record of any declaration.

ANd here is another (familiar) tale of the liturgical soviets in operation – this time in Liverpool

St. Mary of the Angels

http://www.apollo-magazine.com/issue/june-2006/73686/hidden-culture.thtml

What he says about the 2008 City of Culture is dead on! While the great and the good in Cork City Council were trying to be “cultured” throughout 2005, the Bolshey Soviet in Cobh produced its plan to wreck the interior of one of the most culturally significant buildings in the South of Ireland – and the “cultured” counterparts of Cork City Council in Cobh Urban District Council were perfectly complicitous in this premediteted act of sheer and unremitted vandalism.

Praxiteles believes that the Friends of St. Mary’s in Liverpool are deserving of every support!!

Praxiteles is beginning to think that there appaers to be a fatality for anything that the Titanic touched (even remotely) be Cobh Cathedral or St. Mary’s in Liverpool. And is also convinced that the there is one and the same programme of delapidation going on both in Cobh and in Liverpool. Strange again, both Cobh and St. Mary’s are by architects from the Pugin family.

http://www.scottiepress.org/projects/smota.htm

Some further details:

http://www.liverpooltales.com/stories/nun.shtml

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-life-features/liverpool-special-features/2007/09/08/the-river-mersey-runs-through-my-veins-64375-19752775/

Here is the official text of Summorum Pontificum:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/motu_proprio/documents/hf_ben-xvi_motu-proprio_20070707_summorum-pontificum_lt.html

and here is a translation:

http://www.summorumpontificum.net/2007/07/summorum-pontificum-english.html

And here we have a bit of cold consolation for the Cobh Liturgical Soviet, its Gaeuleiter and Gaueleiterennin, and for its Bolshey Red Guard in Cobh. Make no mistake about it: Summorum Pontificum is the liturgical equivalent of the collapse of the Berlin wall.

From to-day’s Spectator

An exciting time to be Catholic

This is a true Catholic revolution

Damian Thompson

Next Friday, 14 September, the worldwide restrictions on the celebration of the ancient Latin liturgy of the Catholic Church will be swept away. With a stroke of his pen, Pope Benedict XVI has ended a 40-year campaign to eradicate the Tridentine Mass, whose solemn rubrics are regarded with contempt by liberal bishops. In doing so, he has indicated that the entire worship of the Church — which has become tired and dreary since the Second Vatican Council — is on the brink of reformation. This is an exciting time to be a Catholic. Unless, that is, you are a diehard ‘go-ahead’ 1970s trendy, in which case you are probably hoping that the Good Lord will call Joseph Ratzinger to his reward as soon as possible.

First, let us get some terminology out of the way. Until 7 July this year, Catholics believed that there were two main Rites of Mass: the Tridentine or Old Rite, promulgated by Pope Pius V in 1570; and the New Rite, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970. When I was growing up in the years after the Council, I was taught that the New Rite had completely superseded the Old. The only people who attended the Tridentine Mass were hatchet-faced old men wearing berets and gabardine raincoats, who muttered darkly about Satan’s capture of the papacy. I had never been to the Old Mass and knew only two things about it: that it was said by the priest ‘with his back to the people’ — how rude! — and that most priests who celebrated it were followers of the rebel French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. These people were unaccountably ‘attached’ to the Tridentine Rite and its ‘fussy’ accretions — the prayers at the foot of the altar; the intricately choreographed bows, crossings and genuflections of the celebrant; the ‘blessed mutter’ of the Canon in a voice inaudible to the congregation. The New Mass, in contrast, was said by the priest facing the people, nearly always in English. It was for everyone. Including people who didn’t like it.

In the 1980s, in an attempt to woo back the followers of Lefebvre, Pope John Paul II eased the almost total ban on the Tridentine Rite. If groups of the faithful were still ‘attached’ (that word again) to the old liturgy, they could approach their bishop and ask him to make provision for it. In other words, the decision was left in the hands of diocesan bishops, many of whom displayed a shocking meanness of spirit when interpreting the new guidelines. And John Paul, being a busy and ill man who was not terribly fond of the Tridentine Rite, let them get away with it.

Three years ago, lovers of the traditional liturgy were despondent. Yes, matters had improved since the 1970s. The Old Mass was no longer the preserve of Lefebvrists: it was now attracting growing numbers of loyal young Catholics on the run from geriatric ‘worship leaders’. But in many English dioceses it was still easier to track down a witches’ coven than a traditional Mass. And, depressingly, the one curial cardinal who really cared about these things was heading for retirement.

Only he didn’t retire. He became Pope instead. And, on 7 July, he issued a document that did more than abolish restrictions governing the celebration of the Tridentine Mass. The apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, issued ‘Motu Proprio’ (that is, as a personal decree), restores the traditional liturgy — the whole Missal, not just the Mass — to full parity with the post-Vatican II liturgy of 1970. It was a move of breathtaking boldness.

The enemies of the old Latin Mass are so horrified by Summorum Pontificum and its accompanying letter that they have either pretended that it does not exist or have misrepresented its contents. The key points are as follows. From next Friday, priests do not need to ask permission to say the traditional Mass privately, and lay people can attend these private celebrations. More important, if a group of the faithful — no number is given, but it need only be a handful — ask their parish priest to provide a public Sunday celebration of the traditional Mass, he is to do so. He does not have to say it himself — most priests have no idea how to celebrate it — but if he cannot find a qualified priest then his bishop will draft one in. And if the bishop decides to throw a spanner in the works, Rome will intervene.

Even more striking than these provisions, however, is the new liturgical landscape in which the Motu Proprio will be applied. From Friday, there will be no Tridentine Rite, no New Rite. The pre- and post-Vatican II Masses will no longer be referred to as separate Rites, but as the ‘extraordinary’ and ‘ordinary’ forms of one Latin Rite. The traditional Mass will not be called after the Council of Trent, but after the Pope who issued the most recent (1962) revision of it, Blessed Pope John XXIII. For anyone who enjoys the sight of liberals squirming, that is the nicest touch of all: the former Tridentine Rite now bears the name of the man who convened Vatican II. Why not? It was the only Mass he ever knew. The vernacular Mass was entirely Paul VI’s doing.

‘The Pope is not a trained liturgist,’ squealed the right-on Catholic magazine the Tablet after the Motu Proprio was published. On the contrary: he is a liturgist and theologian of genius. And what he is trying to achieve with Summorum Pontificum and the forthcoming new English translation of Paul VI’s Missal is to move beyond the liturgical squabbles of the past.

‘In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek,’ said St Paul. ‘Nor traditionalist nor liberal,’ adds Benedict. The Pope knows that the vast majority of Catholics wish to worship God in their own language — but he also knows that the communities that use the Missal of John XXIII are among the most dynamic in the universal Church. Summorum Pontificum tore down the liturgical veil separating the old from the new; now the social barriers must be removed. For that to happen, former traditionalists will have to stop thinking of themselves as a spiritual elite; and former liberals must turn their eyes towards the astonishing treasures that this greatest of modern Popes has reclaimed from the rubbish heap. As I said, this is an exciting time to be a Catholic.

re: The gothic revival in North Cork

A prospect of the Pain Brothers St. Fanahan’s, Mitchelstown. c. 1830, which disappeared in the night in 1978.

and a view of Mitchelstown Castle also by them.

St. Mary’s Church, Buttevant, Co. Cork

A photograph of the streetscape and St. MAry’s Church, Buttevant, Co. Cork c. 1895.

Re Ballintotis

Is anyone in a position to confirm that the sacristy of the church has been demolished in the night? Perhaps someone migt be able to trip over there and take a few pictures so that we can see the situation – one way or the other?

This cannot be true. Ballintotis is a protected structure and I cannot imagine that any part of it could be demolished without planning permission. The church dates from 1839 and is probably by Brothre Michael Augustine O’Riordan. Given that so little of his oeuvre has survived the loss of any part of Ballintotis would be simply unconscienible.

In this second poll on the desirability of the HACK’s shuffling off the mortal coil which is open to viewers rather than contributors, it would seem that a similar pattern is emerging: practically no support for the Cloyne HACK’s continuation in office and overwhealming public demand for their resignation!.

Only two persons appeared to have given support to the HACK -which is an interesting sociological phenomenon not least in that it would seem to indicate that not even all the viweing members of the Cloyne HACK could muster the brains to vote for themselves! It looks as though we REALLY are face to face with the intelectually challenged!!