while you were away from your desk

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 13, 2009

Credentialed British theologian Nicholas Lash is in a froth about the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus ("Having Waited Too Damn Long Already"). The problem, you see, is that the bishops were not consulted ahead of time.

The failure of “Rome” to inform the Archbishop of Canterbury until the last minute; the bypassing of the bishops’ conferences most affected by the proposal -- this is of a piece with the issuing, in 2007, of the apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, encouraging general use of the unreformed Missal of 1962, in the teeth of a great deal of episcopal objection.

Right, right. Prof. Lash seems not to remember that the Second Vatican Council's decree on liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, indisputably the product of full-contact episcopal collegiality, was "implemented" by diktat of the apparat headed by Annibale Bugnini in such a way that the final product bore no discernible connection to the Mass as conceived by the bishops. No problem with that, apparently. Yet today, when the Church of England has declared a State of Bewilderment about the meaning of the Ten Commandments, Lash is incensed because the Holy See didn't include Rowan Williams in the conversation.

Didn't they send him a Candy-gram?