Patrimonial thoughts

• My guess is there won’t be any real news about the ordinariates until they start and the converts start coming, however many or few they are, which won’t be for at least another year or so. The rest is speculation or — dithering conservative Anglicans, pouty liberal ones and hostile liberal RCs — not news.
• A chuckle about traditional English pronunciation of Latin from Dr Munn: ‘Benny-dicey-tea’ (Benedicite) sounds like the Pope had a bad cuppa. My guess is the schoolboy pronunciation of some terms by Anglicans and in English generally (Cæsar, Dido and the city of Regina in Canada for example) goes back to Chaucer’s time and was how priests read the Mass and office aloud. Church Latin pronunciation wasn’t standardised until the Counter-Reformation, giving two versions, the beautiful Italian pronunciation much of the world uses today (including the US and Anglicans when singing) and the German/Middle European way where soft c is s not ch.
• At home the radiators are supposed to be working but in last night’s cold snap (in the teens in the old money) only one, in the bathroom, was so this morning I got to read the office (Coverdale’s psalm translations) in a room where I could just about see my breath. All I needed to make it more Anglican was to throw on a surplice.
• Image: Bishop John Milner, Vicar Apostolic for the Midland District of England, circa 1800, from here. Fr Chadwick from here has suggested that the vicars apostolic could be a model for the ordinariates.

Labels: Anglicanism, England, humour, the Catholic faith