What would Forest have thought...

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

... of the Mass in which the Pope beatified John Henry Newman?

Or, for that matter, what would Nicola - or Patrick, or any of the others - have thought?

I should add that I'm asking this as an interested outsider who watched most of it and is eagerly awaiting discussion, but probably doesn't know enough to be able to actually contribute much.

Comments

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

A Patrick think-alike, who was one of those you saw presented - to welcome the Pope, not at the Offertory - has since groused to me about Christ, be Our Light (which I love) but admired the rest. he also complained about the candles - the Pope is known to prefer candles on the altar, so not-Patrick thought that the floor candles arrangement was discourteous.

But what did you think?

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

Well... at the risk of sounding horribly shallow, I confess I was most appreciative of the aesthetics - the choices of music, and all the Latin (don't often get very much of either). Which led to my wondering if the liturgy was trad enough for Patrick as well. But of course I'm nowhere near knowledgeable enough to have picked up on finer points like the candles, which is interesting to know.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I've asked for clarification. Apparently, the reason that the Pope likes to have the candles on the altar is not pure oldfashionedness.
(Of course, we can't prove that this idea is correct - even if one got an audience, 'tisn't exactly the first thing you'd ask him about.)
It seems that he thinks that the modern thing of taking everything off the altar serves to promote the ego of the priest, whereas when cross and candles were all there, it created a certain invisibility and anonymity

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Would Patrick have approved of John Henry Newman being beatified at all? I'm not that knowledgeable about this but sure I heard somewhere that Newman himself would have been surprised/disapproving if he'd known?

[biskybat.livejournal.com]

I think Patrick would have quite liked it all. There's something very exclusively Catholic about saints which might have appealed to him. And he would probably think Cardinal Newman was a 'good chap' too.

I can imagine Nicola's mystification at the whole business and see her as thinking Cardinal Newman wouldn't have liked it if he'd made so sure no-one would be able to disinter any relics. Patrick would mention the miracle as irrefutable proof that he would have been in favour and Nicola would be left feeling confused by P's logic but privately convinced of a flaw there somewhere if only she could articulate it in the teeth of his implacable belief system.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

That's very good - I like it.
Um. The C of E doesn't have a process, but it has created a newish calendar of memorial days, which comes fairly close to recognizing non-scriptural sainthood (as opposed to the NT "all are saints" approach).

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Yes - Newman asked for compost to be put in his grave in order to accelerate decomposition. Rather gruesomely, relics are part of the process, and this isn't confined to Catholicism and beatificaton - think of Victorian hair brooches and death masks?
I can't find the reference, but his problem was that he thought that these proclamations belong to the past, and that they are obstacles to conversion. Similarly, he didn't want ex cathedra infallibitity to be proclaimed, because he foresaw the consequences we've got - that people waste intelectual energy in speculating what's ex cathedra and what isn't. Well, that's my gloss on it - sorry that I can't give a reference and if I've got rather a long way off topic from the liturgy

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

This might help about the infallibiity thing
Ian Ker, quoted here,was quoted severa ltimes on BBC coverage - I think he was there

http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/03/newman-on-papal-infallibility.html

[charverz.livejournal.com]

But relics don't have to be part of a saint's body. Anything he/she touched is also a relic. I won't get into first and second class relics here, but you can Google it if you're interested.