Before There Were Muslims To Hate The Jews, French Catholics Did A Pretty Good Job Of It

Archbishop Lefebvre

Anti-Semitism is as French as crepes suzette—even more so—as we can see that its roots extend deep into the history of the Gallican peoples—long before there even was a France, but as we enter into the modern era the battle lines form and we will see the development of the connection between Anti-Semitism and the Catholic “Traditionalist” movement.  

The Jews had a particularly rough road in medieval France and the French Crown played a crucial role in the harassment of the Jews. There were several episodes in which this harassment peaked into persecution and even mob violence.  The Crusades triggered several waves of mass murder of Jews.  The French Crown expelled the Jews from their domains in 1182, 1306, 1322, and 1394.   Jews were forbidden to own or hold land, had to wear distinctive clothing, were restricted in where they could live, and often saw their synagogues destroyed (or converted into churches) and their sacred books burned.  But as France entered the Enlightenment, many of a philosophically liberal persuasion began to call for the emancipation of the Jews in the Kingdom of France. One of the Enlightenment figures who was notorious for his anti-Semitism, however, was Voltaire.  On the eve of the French Revolution a number of advocates of Reform including the Count de Mirabeau and the Abbé Grégoire advocated giving the Jews full citizenship.  While the government of Louis XVI did not accede to this suggestion, there were several municipalities that enfranchised Jews.  As the Revolution began to unfold, the plight of the Jews became one of the contentious issues with the advocates of Reform (from constitutional monarchy through radical revolutionaries) supporting civil rights for the Jews and the monarchists/reactionaries opposing them.  When the papal territory of Avignon was seized by the revolutionaries and incorporated into France, the Avignonese Jews were granted full citizenship in France for their support of the annexation of the formerly papal territory by France in 1791.  Their siding with the Revolutionary (though still a constitutional monarchy) government in seizing the papal territories only further alienated the Catholic party from the Jews.  As the Revolution progressed from Constitutional Monarchy to Republic, the Jews of France embraced the anti-monarchy positions and were happy to see the Church disestablished.  However, they did not support the Jacobins and the Reign of Terror and when the Cult of Reason proscribed Christian religious worship, the ban was most often applied to Jewish worship as well.  As the dust of Revolution settled and Napoleon emerged as Emperor of the French, Jews were guaranteed full and equal rights in the Empire.  They were freed from the Ghettos wherever the French Army conquered and Judaism was recognized as an official religion of the Empire along with Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism.  Napoleon further convoked an assembly of Jewish representatives from throughout his empire known as the Grand Sanhedrin to be a sort of Jewish High Council and represent the interests of the Jewish community to the Empire.  This helped draw the line with Jews in Napoleon’s favor while the Catholics tended to be Royalists who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Empire in hopes of a restoration of the French Bourbons to the Crown.  Throughout the nineteenth century Catholics would continue to support the Bourbon/Monarchist causes while the Jews would support the various liberal governments that came intermittently along between restorations of the monarchy and the revival of the Empire under Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III). 

When the 2^nd Empire collapsed towards the end of the Franco Prussian War the monarchists held a majority in the National Assembly but were divided between the Legitimists who favored the Comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X and a semi-absolutist monarchy, and the Orleanists who favored the Comte de Paris, the grandson of Louis Philippe, and a constitutional monarchy.  Although a compromise was finally arranged, the monarchist party was unwilling to accept the terms on which the crown was being offered and what was meant to be a temporary Republic but ended up lasting almost seventy years was established under the monarchist Marshal of France with the improbable name of Patrice de MacMahon.  Although MacMahon was a Legitimist who favored the restoration of a strong monarchy, he took his duties as President of the Republic seriously and refused to sanction a coup by the conservatives to take over the Republic.  By the time of MacMahon’s resignation in 1879 the monarchist cause had lost popular support and the Republic was pretty firmly established. 

The Catholic Church in France strongly supported the restoration of the monarchy; therefore non-Catholics: Protestants, Jews, and Secularists supported the Republic.  Consequently the Church in France became a strong force for political and social reactionism.  French Catholics felt somewhat betrayed by Pope Leo XIII’s endorsement of the Republic.  The Catholic reactionaries mounted a strong anti-Semitic campaign and were particularly intent on purging the military of Jews.  This resulted in the infamous Dreyfus case where a French officer of Jewish blood, Alfred Dreyfus, was framed and convicted of treason and then imprisoned under appalling conditions before finally being cleared.  Catholicism and anti-Semitism became deeply linked by their common affiliation to conservative French politics in the early 20^th century. 

Following the Dreyfus affair and the anti-Semitism that surrounded it, a reactionary movement arose called Action Français.   Action Français set about undoing any and all effects of the French Revolution—it was monarchist, anti-democratic, nationalistic and very, very Catholic.    In fact is was so Catholic that Pius XI condemned the movement in 1926—in other words, Pius saw the movement as using a veneer of Catholic faith for political and socio-economic objectives that were contrary to Catholic thought.  Pius XII lifted the excommunications in 1939 when he saw Action Français as a defense against Marxist-Leninism, but the Holy See never endorsed the political or sociological objectives of the movement which ran contrary to the encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI (and subsequently to the social encyclicals of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.) 

Despite the relative strength of Action Français in the first half of the 20^th century, monarchism never garnered enough political momentum for there to be serious consideration of restoring the French monarchy, especially in a somewhat absolutist form as advocated by the hard-line monarchists.  Action Français faded out after World War II, but its nationalistic, conservative, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic fanaticism remained in the hearts of many French reactionaries.

Among the bearers of the Action Français heritage was the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.  Lefebvre came from a monarchist family in the North of France.  Like others in the Legitimist tradition they saw the French Revolution and the end of the ancien regime as the collapse of everything Catholic.  They wanted not only to restore the Bourbons to the Throne of France, but Catholicism as the State Religion.  Lefebvre himself was an ardent supporter of the Vichy Regime during the Nazi occupation as he saw the Petain dictatorship as the womb for a reborn Monarchist France.  The Archbishop shared in the anti-immigrant, anti-Jew, anti-Muslim, anti-democratic views of Action Français and later, with the collapse of the movement as a force in French politics, shifted his political allegiance to Jean-Marie LePen and his French National Party.  Le Pen is infamous for his anti-Semitism and his skepticism about the Holocaust. 

Lefebvre’s own anti-Semitism has colored the Catholic Traditionalist movement.  Many Traditionalists have insisted on maintaining the older Good Friday Collect for the Jews, describing them as perfidis (unbelieving, but often translated perfidious).   This word had been removed from the Liturgy by John XXIII who literally stopped the Good Friday Service in 1960 and ordered the prayer recited without that word.  Benedict XVI insisted that the traditional collect be altered to avoid the word but his insistence has been ignored by many in the “Traditionalist” community and certainly by those in Lefebvre’s Society of Saint Pius X.  Among the four bishops illicitly ordained by Lefebvre, the Englishman Richard Williamson, has been a notorious Holocaust denier.  Contemporary Traditionalist literature both in France and throughout Western Europe and North America, the parts of the world where neo-Traditionalism has taken root, is often laced with anti-Semitism, sometimes subtle, sometimes virulent.  The Traditionalist communities in France are hotbeds of agitation against both Jews and Muslims.  

We All Have Our Agenda: The Age of Kings Has Passed

The dignity of the Liturgy is

found in its simplicity

I have mentioned in a few entries that we are seeing the development of two distinct Catholic Churches here in our society.  (I don’t think it is a universal problem but it certainly is taking place in the United States and I suspect to a somewhat lesser extent in Great Britain, and to a lesser extent yet in Ireland, Canada, and Australia.  It also seems to manifest itself in France and perhaps in Germany.)  My last posting about how we see the Church in relationship to monarchism touches on this as the conflict between the “Vatican II Catholic Church” and the “pre-Vatican II Catholic Church” seems to revolve around the issue of monarchy, or at least a monarchial view of the world. 

I was struck several years ago by the doyenne of the Katholic Krazies, an author by the name of Solange “Nellie” Hertz, writing about how the American Republic is fundamentally incompatible with our Catholic faith because of its roots in freemasonry and the incongruity of republicanism with authentic Catholicism which is essentially monarchist.  Anyone who has ever known Mrs. Hertz knows that she is a whack-job of the first degree, a person who lives in a parallel universe where the reality coordinates are stuck in the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.  But her conviction that republican government is fundamentally flawed has won its disciples. A few years ago Michael Voris on his “Church Militant TV” (then “Real Catholic TV) advocated the idea that we need to replace our constitution with a Catholic monarchy in which what suffrage there would be would be limited to practicing Catholics.  

Now Voris is crazy, though not as crazy as Hertz, but there are others who pick up their cry.  One of the Katholic Krazy blogs, Eponymous Flower   (http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com) declares itself:  “This is a polemical Catholic Royalist blog.”  When I first came across Eponymous Flower I thought that it was perhaps British or Australian, but over the time I have perused it is is clearly an American blog.  Why is an American a royalist?   I mean I can see it if you are British, or even Australian or Canadian.  But why would an American be “royalist?”  I thought all the Tories moved to Nova Scotia in 1784. 

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I am a sucker for Royal weddings and funerals.  I love watching the Horse Guards go prancing down the Mall, the carriages rolling along, the trumpets, the resonant tones of the Archbishop of Canterbury intoning Cranmer’s sonorous phrases. (Glad I checked that word—originally I had “somnolent phrases.”)  And nobody does band music like the Brits—solemn, stately; not the county fair sound of John Philip Sousa.  But I realize that at the end of the day, it is all a charade.  That old lady with the sparkly thing on her head has to waddle into the bathroom and sit herself down to do her business like the rest of us.  God bless her, I hope she as an easier time of it than most people her age—or mine—in the mornings.  But the Queen-thing isn’t real.  It never really was real, but the dear old thing can’t send a dinner invitation out without consulting with her Prime Minister.  It is all an illusion—the robes, the crown, “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the Queen;” the power lies elsewhere.  It had its day but there is nothing left to it but the theatre.  And the faith in God that Jesus has entrusted to us is real, is more real than anything in existence.  And while good liturgy has elements of theatre, it has to be real and can’t be pretend. 

When I see Bishop Dewane or Bishop Olmstead or Bishop Slattery getting all gussied up in their antique finery or see the “canons” of the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest hosting some prelate engulfed in fur and dragging nine yards of red silk behind him, I can’t help but think that unintentionally a mockery is being made of the most sacred thing in the world.  The ultimate Reality is being reduced to farce, to grown men involved in some archaic ceremony that has lost its roots in an irrecoverable culture that once gave it its meaning.  It exists now for itself, without reference to the Mystery of which it once spoke.  What is left is artificial: a suspension of the world in which we live in favor of the imaginary world of some idealized past when kings sat on thrones and their subjects scraped and bowed without raising their eyes to look their Master in his face.  That world is an escape from the complexities of the world in which we live: a world of ambiguities and struggles; a world where roles are changing; a world where people are suffering and dying from the effects of war and famine and disease; but also a world where there is hope for a very different social order where God’s children will be able to reach the dreams and destinies that their heavenly Father has hoped for them.  This is the world where God is truly King: where Christians consecrate themselves to make certain that to the fullness of their abilities aided by Grace that each of God’s children can have the share of this world’s goods that our Father in heaven wants them to have.  And we need a liturgy that celebrates that promise—the true Kingdom—rather than parody the ceremonials of some earthly court.  It was fine in its day, but that day is over. 

Such a liturgy manifests the diversity of gifts within the entire Body of Christ.  It is not centered on the priest but the priest stands in the place of Christ at the heart of the community.  Such a liturgy invites people to a “full, active, and conscious” participation in the liturgy because they are called to a full, active, and conscious participation in the proclamation of the Kingdom of God—again, that Kingdom in which each of God’s children will be given the fulfillment that his or her Heavenly Father has created them for. 

  I’m sorry, but the old rite is the glorification of the priest.  O sure, apart from the sermon, he doesn’t get to do the insufferable monologue that some priests do at various points of the Mass but in the old rite the whole ritual is designed to focus on him as he whispers “the magic words” that only he can say and for which we depend on him to be our mediator and intercessor.  He and he alone represents Christ, stripping the other members of the Body of their baptismal identity.   He has his little tri-cornered hat with a pom-pom and his lace petticoat beneath the gorgeously brocaded gown and the spotlight never leaves him.  Give me the naked Christ.  Let me see Christ in the least of his sisters and brothers.  Let me see him in the lonely, in the frightened, in the helpless and the hopeless.  And let me see a priest who recognizes Christ not in the splendidly robed caricature of a man but in the least of the brothers and sisters. 

I must say that I am spoiled as over the years I have generally been able to attend the conventual Mass of a monastic community where I have seen the Novus Ordo done in a magnificent simplicity. The church is severely plain with no distraction but great beauty in the arrangement of space and light with a great sense of proportion.  The vesture is simple and masculine.  The music, for the most part contemporary and in English or Spanish, is deeply throated and rich.  There is no sense of fuss or hurry and while every rubric is followed, it is done so with an economy and a sense of grace.  The liturgy is an experience that is both deeply contemplative and communal.  And I am well aware that few parishes achieve this type of liturgical prayer—but it is within their reach.  And it avoids the buffoonery of baroque revival in a world that has moved beyond royal courts of a vanished monarchial Europe. 

Cardinal Dulles wrote that the first thousand years of the papacy were a time of evangelization; the second were a time of power; the third millennium will be a time of service.  I think what he wrote pertains not to the papacy alone but to the entire Church.  I think we are reawakening to the mission which Christ has entrusted to his Church.  The triumphalism of monarchy does not speak to that mission, and we need a liturgy that does.  We need to be a servant Church and we need a liturgy that reflects our mission to be servants, not masters.  That is the Church I believe is the Church of Jesus Christ.  

We All Have Our Agenda cont.: Church as Monarchy

Francesco Podesti's painting of 

Pius IX proclaiming the dogma

of the Immaculate Conception 

shows the Papal Court in full 

bloom.

I mentioned the other day in writing about the blog The New Liturgical Movement/Novus Motus Liturgicus, that the self-appointed mission of TNLM/NML is to put the toothpaste back into the tube and restore the Church to its monarchial model that we can remember from the 1950’s.  I was asked by a respondent to clarify what I mean about “restore the Church to its monarchial model.” 

Throughout its history the Church has had several ways of looking at itself. In its earliest phase it was the Synagogue.  The Church was born from the Synagogue.  The Greek word συναγωγή (synagogue) means “assembly.”   Another word for assembly in Greek is ἐκκλησία which transliterates to ecclesia, the word we use for Church (the congregation, not the building).  The first two generations of Christians met in the synagogues of first century Judaism and worshipped alongside their Jewish co-religionists.  Christianity began as a movement within Judaism and the first generations of Christians were Jews or aspirants to Judaism who had come to recognize that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah.  Eventually, somewhere around the year 80, they would be excommunicated from Judaism for the dissent within the community this faith in Jesus caused.  But they took the practices of the synagogue with them.  Our tradition of Morning and Evening Prayer, for example, today enshrined in the Liturgy of the Hours, developed out of the morning and evening prayer of the Synagogue.  The synagogue was led by a board of elders—πρεσβύτεροι—presbyters or elders—under the leadership of an ἐπίσκοπος—an episcopos or overseer—from which we get our word “bishop.”  These Christian synagogues, once expelled from Judaism, recognized each other by a common faith in Jesus and though they would develop with local variations in liturgy and practice, they offered Eucharistic hospitality to visitors from other assemblies based on that common faith.  In other words, they were in communion with one another—not simply because they shared the Eucharistic communion, but rather they shared the Eucharist together because they shared the same faith.  Now notice—and I want to be very clear about this for those who speak of the pre-conciliar rites as “The Mass of All Ages”—they did not celebrate the pre-Vatican II rite.  That only comes much later, much later.   From the descriptions that survive of second and third century liturgy, they retained the basic synagogue format of readings from the Prophets and the Law, to which they added the letters of the apostles and the Gospels.  They interspersed their worship with the singing of psalms.  There were prayers both of petition and praise.  They then took a collection for the needy among the community—or those of other communities in need—and then offered the Prayer of Thanksgiving, the εὐχαριστία or, more properly, the ἀναφορά (anaphora).  We will look in a future posting at the constitutive elements of this prayer but we would know it today as the Prayer of Consecration or the Canon of the Mass or the Eucharistic Prayer.  This was followed in turn by the communion in which those present shared the Eucharistic elements as a sacramental witness that they were united in the one Body of Christ.   The various local Churches were very much aware of the ties that bound them to one another. When a bishop visited from another Church he was invited to preside at the Eucharist as a sign of the communion of Churches.  Collections were taken up in the Church to help other local Churches undergoing particular needs.  When a new bishop was chosen, the surrounding bishops would gather to approve the election by the clergy and people and to consecrate the new bishop into their fellowship. 

In this growing network of Christian assemblies certain assemblies—or Churches—stood in particular honor and prestige because of their having been founded by Apostles.  The Church of Rome held a particular honor in this regard, but so too did Alexandria (Mark), Antioch (Peter), Jerusalem (James) and Constantinople (Andrew).  Over a period of time these five Churches developed into what was referred to as the Pentarchy.  The Church moved from a communion of local Churches under their respective bishops to a communion of patriarchates with the local Churches clustered around their patriarchs.  It was only in the time of Justinian (sixth century) that it was clarified that the fives patriarchates stood in this order of importance: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.  Nevertheless, a certain primacy to the Roman Church had been acknowledged from the end of the first century (the Letter of Clement) and more definitively established at the time of the Council of Nicea and then again at Chalcedon in the time of Leo I.  The Roman Church was acknowledged for its pride of place as the leading Church because it was founded on the apostles Peter and Paul.  Peter and Paul.  All the lists of bishops of Rome for the first five centuries list Peter and Paul jointly as co-bishops of Rome.  But notice, just as they did not celebrate the Eucharist according to the norms laid down by Pope Saint Pius V, neither were the Roman bishops “popes” in the same sense or with the same authority they would later acquire.  The visible and temporal aspects of the Church are conditioned by historical development.  The Church exists in history and is affected by it as is any human institution.  And while the Church can be said to be a Divine Institution on a theological level, in its earthly manifestation it is historical and subject to the vicissitudes of history. 

In this second period then the Church saw itself as a communion of local churches ascribing to one Creed as laid down at the Council of Nicea and clarified by subsequent Councils.  The Church of Rome and its bishop stood in a primacy of honor among the Churches of the world and their bishops, but it was definitely a fraternity and not a monarchy.  It was a primacy of honor not a position of power. The Churches of the East which separated with Rome in the schism of 1054 (there are Churches which had separated from the universal communion earlier in refusing to accept the Chalcedonian formula regarding the precise relationship of the Divine and Human natures of the one Christ) still work pretty much in this fraternal model but, as in most families, with considerable jealousy and strife among some very competitive brothers.  Notice, I said that the Churches of the East separated with Rome, not from Rome.  While Rome was trying to assert its authority over Constantinople and the other Churches of the Greek World, those Churches had never acknowledged Roman supremacy and so cannot be said to have broken away from under. Primacy—yes.  Supremacy, no.   In great part it was precisely this struggle for power that triggered the break.  It was also at this period that we see, in the Western Church, the practice of bishops concelebrating the Eucharist with their brother bishops or with their priests disappear and be replaced by the senior clergyman presiding singularly over the Eucharist.  The Eastern Church which retained a more fraternal ecclesiology, also retained the practice of concelebration. 

After the schism of 1054, the Roman Bishop as Patriarch of the West, stood in a position superior to the other western bishops.  He was their patriarch.  Following much the same model as the Holy Roman Emperor was using at this precise period in history to assert his authority over lesser kings, princes, dukes, counts and other nobles of the empire, the Popes worked diligently to carve out a place of superior authority over the Churches of the West.  They had competition in this from the Emperors who saw themselves as Heads of the Church and Vicars of Christ.  That led to the investiture conflict of the 11^th century.  The papacy eventually won the point that the Pope, not the Emperor, ruled the Church.  Unfortunately in the East—the Byzantine Empire and later the Russian Empire—this point was never made and the Church remained subject to the temporal power as an agency of the State.  In the West as papal power increased, the popes also had to meet the resentment of bishops who felt their own power and right to be under siege by the growing papal authority.  It was a back and forth struggle for centuries.  While the papacy had great influence at the time of Pope Saint Gregory I (c 600), the political turmoil of the latter seventh and eighth centuries put it into decline.  When Rome went into decline, the corresponding power of the other bishops in the west increased proportionately.  A weak papacy made for strong bishops; a strong papacy for weaker bishops.  Charlemagne briefly restored the prestige of the Roman papacy but the papal scandals and infighting among the Roman families competing for the papacy in the ninth and tenth centuries sent the papacy into its worst decline.  The Reform efforts of the Ottonian Emperors and then the Gregorian Reform of the 11^th century restored the greatness of the papacy which peaked in its power in the reign of Innocent III (1198-1216).  The overweening pride of Innocent’s successors—most infamously Boniface VIII—led ultimately to the Avignon papacy of the 14^th century and the Great Western Schism that lasted until the end of the second decade of the 15^th.  Although John XXII at Avignon was one of the greatest popes of history (reigned 1316-34), overall the Avignon papacy and the situation of popes and anti-popes during the Great Schism led to a near total collapse of Papal authority.  With that collapse of papal authority we see the rise of Conciliarism—the idea that the supreme authority in the Church is not the pope but with an Ecumenical Council.  This idea is somewhat of a fallback on the ecclesiology still held by the Orthodox Churches of the East where the assembly of bishops is superior to any one Patriarch.  The papacy reached its low point when in 1415 the Council of Constance required the resignation of Gregory XII (along with the two anti-popes) and elected Martin V.  Subsequent popes were determined to establish the principle that they were not subject to Councils—or any other human authority.  It may be said that it was from this time that the papal monarchy was established. 

This development of the papal monarchy at the end of the 15^th century corresponds to the rise of the nation states in Europe.  Just as the Popes make it clear that they are not answerable to the bishops, so too were Kings in France, Spain, Portugal, and England making it clear that the power of the feudal nobles was giving way to the absolute power of the Crown.  Through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the theory of the Divine Right of Kings would establish itself.  In Protestant England this absolute monarchism  would be checked by the Civil War/Commonwealth (1642-1660) and the Glorious Revolution (1688).  In Catholic France, Spain, and Portugal Divine Right would continue until the French Revolution (1789) and its Napoleonic aftermath.   Papal power and authority consolidated itself at this same period not only over the Papal States but on a “spiritual” plane—over the Western Church.  The collapse of Papal civil government in 1870 only reinforced the Pope’s absolute monarchy over the Church.  The Italian anti-clericals who supported Italian nationalism and the seizing of the Papal States thought that by destroying papal civil authority they would destroy the Church.  This only made Pius IX and his successors more determined to tighten their hold over the Church—a kingdom beyond the reach of Garibaldi and his anti-Church red-shirts.  Despite being confined to the 108 acres of the Vatican and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, the Papal Court maintained full splendor in ceremonial—not only in the basilica but in the Apostolic palace. For full-court occasions, prelates were garbed magnificently in scarlet and purple silk with trains and furs and bejeweled rings and pectoral crosses.  Noble Guards and Swiss Guards and Palatine Guards—each in their varied uniforms stood in their assigned places.   Gentlemen of the papal chamber in velvet knee breeches and cutaways and frilled shirts waited on the pope and his attendants.  And everyone except the pope had shoes with silver buckles; the pope wore embroidered slippers.  It was splendid—any Persian satrap would be green with envy, though it probably left Jesus scratching his head wondering what it was all about. 

In 1958, the same year that Pius XII died, Queen Elizabeth abolished the custom of debutantes being presented at Court.  Princess Margaret said: “We had to put a stop to it; every tart in London was getting in.”  Considering that Margaret herself was somewhat of a slut one can only imagine the sort of trash that was being allowed to curtsey to the Queen.  It certainly wasn’t like when the Countess of Grantham presented Rose MacClare to George V and Queen Mary in last season’s Downton Abbey.  Ah, but the world changes.  No one knows that better than Queen Elizabeth.  Over the years she has made great changes in the Court of Saint James.  In fact, she has all but abolished it.  Oh, she still takes a Lady in Waiting or two with her wherever she goes.  (Someone needs to carry the odd banknote in case the Queen wants some spur-of-the-moment shopping.)  Most of the antique offices have been abolished.  The Groom of the Stool, for example, was responsible for providing a portable toilet (I know, the Queen prefers the less vulgar “commode,” but my “gentle readers” might not be familiar with the precise meaning of that word) for the sovereign—a convenience rarely needed in this day of almost universal plumbing.  And who needs a garde-vaiselle today?  Who even knows what a garde-vaiselle is?   No, modern conveniences and the fact that the £ simply does not go as far today as it once did, had required certain economies to be made on behalf of the Crown.

Similarly Paul VI took a look at the papal court and trimmed it way down.  Unlike John XXIII who loved the pomp of the papal monarchy, Paul VI drastically simplified the dress of prelates, eliminated the noble and palatine guards, and did away with many of the superfluous members of the papal household.  It simply was time.  Paul also laid aside the papal tiara—an ornament that the popes had worn—in one form or another—for over a thousand years. 

Correspondingly, It was in the reign of Paul VI that the custom of concelebrating was revived in the Roman Rite.  During the Second Vatican Council, Paul made a point of concelebrating with bishops as a visible sign of the collegial—rather than monarchial—nature of authority in the Church.  Bishops too in their dioceses began concelebrating with their priests at various occasions, indicating that (at least symbolically) they understood their priests shared in the bishop’s ministry and authority.  Priests don’t concelebrate with the faithful as they have different roles in the Eucharistic celebration, but churches began to be designed to show the priest(s) with the faithful gathered around in a community and the priest(s) celebrating with as well as on behalf of their people.  

There were other changes as well.  Many priests began wearing ordinary clothes more often, especially in social occasions with their parishioners.  And many priests began going by “Father-and-their-Christian-name” rather than by their title and surname; in fact some priests have grown comfortable being addressed on a first name basis.  It is rare now to see a person kiss the bishop’s ring—a monarchial custom if ever there was one.  And titles like “Your Excellency” are less commonly used than simply “Bishop.”  Of course sometimes such changes—whether on a parish or diocesan level—are only cosmetic and power sometimes remains what it had always been, the pastor or bishop following a dictatorship model rather than a royal one—but that is human nature.  Some people just need to be in charge.  Jesus didn’t think much of that; neither do I.  And there are those who miss the days of silk trains and canopies and buckled shoes.  Fortunately the “canons” of the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest, continue to offer an ecclesiastical fantasyland for those who want to play dress up and bow and curtsey.  But when I see that I feel like agreeing with Princess Margaret: we have to put a stop to that: every tart in Christendom is getting in.