Sempiterna

Romani calendarii a Gregorio XIII P.M. restituti explicatio, 1603 Christopher Clavius, S.J.

There are some articles on the Internet that are so unfathomably stupid that they end up living rent-free in my mind. One such by a father of seven attempts to equate the logging of community service hours prior to NO Confirmation with simony. It's apparent from the author's writing that the extent of his scriptural and theological knowledge is a disciple packet from a FOCUS Bible study, but with a website titled Thy Geekdom Come I don't know why I expected so much. In any case, the world only received half of his promised four-part series.

Another article is the deplorably titled "Christianity is for Cucks" from the religious-conservative magazine First Things. It's not necessary to critique the content of Matthew Schmitz's piece, as he was expertly excoriated at the time by both Catholics and Protestants alike. But I do want to focus on the short story from which Schmitz pulls his opening quote. "Out of Depth" was written in 1933 by English novelist Evelyn Waugh shortly after his conversion to Catholicism. It follows an episode in the life of Mr. Rip Van Winkle, an American bachelor partying in London. This middle-aged Bertie-Wooster type staggers into a scenario which time-jumps him 500 years into the future. It is from this backdrop that readers are treated to the following passage:

And then later—how much later he could not tell—something that was new and yet ageless. The word “Mission” painted on a board; a black man dressed as a Dominican friar…and a growing clearness. Rip knew that out of strangeness, there had come into being something familiar; a shape in chaos. Something was being done. Something was being done that Rip knew; something that twenty-five centuries had not altered; of his own childhood which survived the age of the world. In a log-built church at the coast town he was squatting among a native congregation; some of them in cast-off uniforms; the women had shapeless, convent-sewn frocks; all round him disheveled white men were staring ahead with vague, uncomprehending eyes, to the end of the room where two candles burned, The priest turned towards them his bland, black face.

Low-IQ writers would ignore the entire prelude and simply focus on the section which I've bolded, deliriously deluding themselves into thinking that Waugh was making some sort of commentary on interwar race relations. But what's worse and telling is the omission of the sentence which immediately follows:

“Ite, missa est.”

Not every blogger who takes on "Out of Depth" is guilty of this, as can be attested to by Kent Lasnoski ("Source, Summit, Sempiterna" on Dappled Things) and John M. DeJak ("Out of Depth" on The Bellarmine Forum). But the irony is that these pieces which support Waugh's view of the perennialism of the Mass are arguing from their personal experiences within the NO establishment. Lasnoski literally starts with an excerpt from "Eucharistic Prayer III." Not only could an NO adherent go cradle to grave never hearing this Latin phrase, but it's not even a given that they will hear it's English translation ("Go, the Mass is ended.") in their weekly worship service.

Missal Changes, © 2022 Mass of the Ages

Around 2013, I remember attending a lecture by a Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J., the director of the Vatican Observatory. One of the points in the presentation was that when Christopher Clavius, S.J., of his same order and profession, composed the exposition which would lead to the Gregorian Reform of the calendar he included tables of the movable feasts between the years 1600 and 5000. What I, as a man swimming in the turbulent waters of Modernity, find most impressive in viewing the image at the top of this post is not so much that Clavius accurately calculated April 20th for the date of Easter this year, but that the table also includes the feast of Septuagesima. Clavius and Waugh belonged to a Church that was truly Catholic, possessing a universality which traversed leagues and millennia, while Consolmagno thinks it good form to publicize ecumenical arguments for moving the date of Easter.

"A Better Tomorrow," © 1964 Earl H. Wolf

Though I just finished giving them a hard time, I do have to give some credit to Lasnoski and DeJak. The former inspired the title on this blog post and the latter inspired the following conclusion. Not only does the Catholic Church persist in her identity as Roman, though the accidents of her cultus may adjust decade to decade, but she also persists in her character as missionary. For obvious reasons the members of St. Anthony Mary Claret call their community and building a Chapel verses a Church or a Parish, but sometimes I wish we were more apt to call ourselves a Mission. It surely does happen, but more often than not as a resignation (i.e., we can't expect to have X ceremony on Y feast because we are just a mission after all). I still sincerely hope for the day when both Miramar Beach is made the Priory of the South and the SSPX adopt pre-55 everything, but until then I'll embrace as a pilgrimage site the nondescript office building off of Scenic Gulf Drive where faithful travel 100 miles to receive the sacraments from the hands of a missionary priest who's traversed 400 miles to do so.