26 February 2014

May I explain ...

 ... that I have been away for a few days visiting dear friends in the Orkneys; which I will say more about soon. My apologies to those who were puzzled  not to see their comments appearing on threads. I have now raced through and enabled most of them. I am also sorry if my finger slipped and some worthy contributions were accidentally consigned to oblivion. Those who enjoy reading threads will have a lot to read.

One quick point about sources, which I am moved to offer because some of those who seem quite sure that the Roman Canon once had an epiclesis quote Fortescue and the Catholic Encyclopedia at me. These are manuals which go back to the beginning of the twentieth century and do no represent the scholarship of the latter part of that century. For the mid-century, try Jungmann The Mass of the Roman Rite, still indispensible as a source of information and references, and Dix Shape of the Liturgy through their indexes. More recently, Paul Bradshaw has made a thing of declining to accept universal common patterns in early liturgies at all.

4 comments:

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Father. Your countryman claims the Epiclesis was neglected and mutilated.

See page 60

http://tinyurl.com/mcmhooj

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Father. On page 196, Vol 2, Mass of the Roman Rite, Fr. Jungmann observes:

However, this missing phrase, namely the the words added to Hoc est corpus meum in the Paul is an amazingly significant omission. Its absence is all the more remarkable because it already appeared (in the form: quod pro vobis [ resp. pro multis confringetur in both of the older texts of the Roman Tradition.

++++++ end quotes +++++

It appears to this Christian Catholic amateur that there have been major changes in the past, a past we often hear being referred to as the unchanging/unchanged Mass of all time (which is a tautology as there has ever been only one Mass)

William Tighe said...

I have been amazed by the number of people who have made cocksure, but ignorant, claims that "Mass facing the people" is "the Early Church custom" based only on an article or two in that Catholic Encyclopedia making the same assertion (which, to be fair, was the scholarly consensus of a century ago).

William Tighe said...

Bornacatholic wrote:

"On page 196, Vol 2, Mass of the Roman Rite, Fr. Jungmann observes:

However, this missing phrase, namely the the words added to Hoc est corpus meum in the Paul is an amazingly significant omission. Its absence is all the more remarkable because it already appeared (in the form: quod pro vobis [ resp. pro multis confringetur in both of the older texts of the Roman Tradition."

I've just taken down from the shelf my copy of Jungmann, and read the passage cited. By "in both of the older texts of the Roman Tradition" he seems to mean (a) Hippolytus and (b) St. Ambrose. To this one can respond, simply and accurately, that few scholars nowadays think that the EP of (Pseudo)Hippolytus is "an older text of the Roman Tradition," and not many think that of St. Ambrose's either (rather holding the latter to be a variant offshoot of a common tradition with Rome).

You really ought to get out and about more, Bac; and a good start would be to read G. G. Willis's posthumously-published *A History of Early Roman Liturgy to the Death of Pope Gregory the Great* (London, 1994: Henry Bradshaw Society).