4 July 2009

More Daft Rituals

Anointing; or, as the people who typeset services often spell it, Annointing. We have a new fashion - or do I mean fad - what is the difference? - of anointing a cleric whenever he or she changes jobs. Priests going to a new parish; bishops committing the spiritual adultery of swapping bishoprics (do you remember the conversation between Bertie Stanhope and Bishop Proudie: Bishop: "Translations from see to see happen rather less frequently nowadays"; Bertie: "Yes, they've cut them all down to more or less the same income now, haven't they?").

When I was licensed at S Thomas's, I had to make a stand against being anointed; Ordination is the only Unction a priest needs. And I gather that the installation of new diocesans is now generally accompanied by lavish unctuosity.

Is there a connexion between the fact that the C of E has definitively set out on a path of ecumenical divergence from Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy, and the new appetite for misusing (and thus cheapening) traditional Catholic usages? And does anyone know when all this nonsense started? Is it another of B*****'s inspirations?

5 comments:

motuproprio said...

Are these the same bishops who refuse to incorporate chrismation into the rite of priestly ordination?

Anonymous said...

Using the term "Bubbles" always makes me perk up! Where I'm from it's a euphemism for a female with an ogliferous bosom, you know, stacked, racked, hooters, jugs, hubba-hubba and all that.

Do you use it in that context? You know, it could improve church attendance.

The Religious PĂ­caro said...

It doesn't seem to be limited to just priests, either. Here's an article that mentions the anointing of a "licensed lay minister": http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2006/apr/22/weekend7.weekend2

William said...

There's a ghastly inevitability about this. The more the C of E turns its back on apostolic faith and order, the more it feels the need to conceal this fact (above all, from itself) by ever more lavish and incongruous deployment of the externals of the very faith and order it is rejecting.

One could argue that the beginning of the end for Catholic Anglicanism was when things like vestments, incense and even reservation ceased to be exotic practices and became accepted and "normal" yet emptied of any understanding of the significance they had possessed while the arcane preserve of an eccentric minority.

Speaking of turning one's back (and in further illustration of the above point), a nearby parish which likes to think of itself as "in the Catholic tradition" recently woke up to the fact that those long-despised and neglected fixed altars are coming back into fashion. The high altar was accordingly used for the first time in decades; the priest, however, was so indoctrinated with versus populum celebration that he conducted the Mass leaning with his back against the altar and with the elements behind him, "for all the world as though his farts could consecrate the bread and wine" (as one observer put it). Needless to say, the Diocese thinks it would be appropriate for that parish and my own to merge "since they are both Anglo-Catholic"; needless also to say, the other parish is simply delighted to welcome women priests at its altar (whether in farting or non-farting orientation I couldn't say).

Anonymous said...

Whoa! Jump back! I blush to consider what the mannual acts of the Fart Mass consisted of, Fr. William. Gives a new swing to the Novus dis-Ordo. Spring-time in the Church!

(BTW do you stand on your head often and argue each case with your wife?)