MORE REASONS FOR WRITING THE RECTOR: Part the Fourth

...the faintest of all human passions is the love of truth. Housman

Editor's Note:  In its effort to save the Rev. Mr. Nkamuke's holy orders, Pistrina continues its post-mortem of Anthony Cekada's pathetic "The Validity of Ordination Conferred with One Hand." 

Without the slightest doubt, the Blunderer must think he earned his scholarly chops in his monograph's discussion of papal priestly ordinations. Unfortunately for him, it offers yet another proof of the Blunderer's gross amateurism. Indeed, the section, like the entire monograph, is solemn testimony to a missing advanced education.

Tony Baloney begins by appealing to the "practice in the Roman books used for priestly ordinations conferred by the Pope." [Blunderer's emphasis.]  He cites as his source for these "Roman" books an 18th century compilation made by the French Benedictine Edmond Martène. (Typical of Bonehead Tone, he consistently fails to spell the name with the grave accent mark. When he's wrong, he's very, very wrong.)

The chief trouble with his "Roman" argument lies in the ugly truth that "the Ordines of Martène...represent early usages of the Church in Gaul."*  Martène's purpose was to rediscover, through the Ordines, "the authentic Roman liturgy in antiquity and follow its adaptations and transformations, particularly in Gaul." ** A cursory inspection of Martène's data reveals that the various Ordines he printed came from places like Noyon, Jumiège, Compiègne, Soisson, Besançon, Le Bec, Cambrai, Pamier, and Mainz. Some documents derived from English sources. Scholars have long noted that the "Roman" Ordines, although they purport to describe how liturgical functions were performed in Rome, are far from homogeneous and contain interpolations, omissions, glosses, corrections, and non-Roman materials. Yet from reading the Blunderer, you'd think these were the very texts from which reigning Roman Pontiffs recited.

Worse than this bit of verbal subterfuge is Tony's despairingly witless affirmation that a

full two-thirds of the Roman books, therefore, used at various points over a period of several hundred years, prescribe that one hand be imposed for priestly ordination. [Blunderer's emphasis.]

But what if -- a wiser head may ask -- the origin of this "Roman" text is secondary? Anyone with an ounce of knowledge of textual criticism would howl with toothsome, derisive laughter at the Bonehead's embarrassingly naïve observation. The renowned New-Testament textual critic Bruce Metzger's advice to beginners is worth heeding, even in this context: "The abundance of witnesses numerically counts for nothing  in view of the secondary origin of the text type as a whole."***

Absent an informed analysis of the provenance of the documents and the genealogical interrelationships among the manuscripts, no one can draw any conclusions about how faithfully Martène's Ordines attest to Roman praxis. Furthermore, it's quite possible that these Ordines may have derived their canonical regulations on priestly ordination from a non-Roman source (say, for instance, the Statuta Ecclesiae Antiqua, compiled in Gaul around a.d. 500 and circulated as [pseudo-] Carthage IV****).  But without hard information, almost everything is groundless speculation.  Given only the Blunderer's presentation, at most all anyone might be able to say about these Ordines is this: 

For several centuries, in some regions beyond the Alps, priestly ordination likely may have been conferred with one hand, under the supposition that one-handed conferral of priestly orders was the Roman practice. 

There's nothing in the Blunderer's exposition of papal priestly ordinations to warrant a claim that one-handed imposition for priestly orders was the actual practice of the Popes at Rome. Moreover, we must entertain the possibility that some transalpine compilers may have, unwittingly, introduced a practice never used in Rome.

However, the crucial information needed to come to a conclusion won't be found in Martène, for he died about a century before great the methodological breakthroughs occurred in the science and art of textual criticism. In addition, the Blunderer is so unschooled that he wouldn't even have thought to reproduce a coherent discussion of manuscript witnesses and exemplars to support his contention. Therefore, you may freely disregard this entire section of Tony's monograph, for, if the source is non-Roman and/or the texts corrupt, the section contributes nothing to the subject under dispute. We must all wait for a competent scholar with formal, advanced university training to visit this topic. Perhaps the work has already been done and is just waiting for us to discover it!

................

At this point we beg your indulgence for the following tedious exposé, but we can't end this post without once again drawing everyone's attention to the Blunderer's intellectual sloppiness. In footnote 41, he prints 

benedicente eum episcopo, manum super caput ejus ponant. 

What's wrong with that? Well, for starters, he gives no source for the emphasis of the word "manum." (Is the emphasis his or was it Martène's?) Second, he either (1) made a transcriptional error by printing ponant (3rd person plural, present active subjunctive) rather than ponat (3rd person singular, present active subjunctive) or (2) he failed to see that ponant, if it did appear in Martène's printed text, should have read ponat.

We couldn't find the 1736 second edition the Blunderer referenced, but we did consult the novissima editio ("latest edition") of the second volume of Martène's work printed in 1763. There we found, under Ordo iii, the following words on p. 39:

 benedicente eum episcopo, manum super caput ejus ponat. [Our emphasis.]

(The original printed text, for your information, is italicized; we only changed two old fashioned long s's [ſ] to round s's. ) Note the word manum is not emphasized, and the verb is in the correct number. Now, certainly, it's in the realm of possibility that Tony's 1736 edition may have misprinted the verb, but common sense coupled with a knowledge of rubrical Latin should have caused an educated man to recognize the misprint and note a correction. But, of course, we posited an educated man, didn't we? (Psst! Just between you and us, our guess is that Tony Baloney's source had no error, for in his footnote 43 for Ordo v, we find the correct verb form used!)

Let's face it, boys and girls: The Blunderer's just a rank amateur in everything he assays. Only the morons inhabiting the sede dystopia could think him erudite.

...............

Here's the bottom line: Tony's whole section on papal ordinations is simply one nasty, unnerving, hot mess! The Blunderer's defense of one-handed conferral of priestly orders is looking more shaky with every post, wouldn't you agree? That's why everyone -- including CLODs ("close loyalists of Dannie") -- must summon the will to contact the rector.  Demand that he not allow "One-Hand Dan" to ordain the Rev. Mr. Nkamuke to the Roman Catholic priesthood, unless Dannie gets himself fixed by undergoing conditional ordination and consecration.

Next week we'll continue poking holes in the Blunderer's sinking monograph by briefly -- mercifully briefly --- dispatching  his section on holy orders in Eastern rites. You'll trust Tony's work even less, we guarantee it (especially if you've read this post's footnote ****).


* Hugh Williams in his 1899 edition of De Excidio Britanniae by Gildas, p. 232 (Google Books).

** Éric Palazzo, A History of Liturgical Books From the Beginning to the Thirteenth Century, p. 181 (Liturgical Press, 1998).

***The Text of the New Testament, p. 212 (Oxford, 1968). We must be grateful for Tony's ignorance: modern textual information is available, but can you imagine how he would have mangled it if, with all his impediments, he had tried to decipher such technical material?

****It's well worth noting, though, that the text of the Statuta printed in 1951 by Michel Andrieu reads differently from Martène's text.   The Benedictine printed (p. 22, ❡XI, 1763 edition) the following, as the rite described by the "Council of Carthage IV":

Presbyter cum ordinatur, episcopo eum benedicente, et manum super caput ejus tenente, etiam omnes presbyteri, qui praesentes sunt, manus suas juxta manum episcopi super caput illius teneant. [Our emphasis. N.B. we altered the ampersand to et, and we changed the long-s in several words.]

Very literally, "When a priest is ordained, while the bishop is blessing him and holding [his] hand upon his [the ordinand's] head, let all the priests who are present also hold over the head of that man [the ordinand] their own hands next to the hand of the bishop." [Our emphasis.]

If you consult Tony's footnotes to the Ordines he cited in defense of one-handed orders (nn. 41-48), you'll note the similarity of language: in fact, the several texts are virtually identical to the above cited direction. In further support of his argument for one-handed conferral of orders, Tony later (under the section on rites derived from Rome) quotes from Paul Bradshaw's book a translation of the Statuta's ritual direction, a text that Tony admits is Gallican. (He must not have seen the Latin text in Martène, so he used a secondary source; bad scholarship, but good in Tony's case because, by borrowing, the chance of mistranslation and mistranscription is reduced by several orders of magnitude.)

However -- and this is a really BIG however -- the recension of the Statuta printed in M. Andrieu's Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen Age ( III, p. 617, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense) reads as follows:

Presbyter cum ordinatur, episcopo benedicente et manus super caput eius tenente, etiam omnes presbyteri qui praesentes sunt, manus suas iuxta manus episcopi super caput illius teneant. [Our emphasis.]

Very literally, "When a priest is ordained, while the bishop is blessing and holding [his] hands upon his [the ordinand's] head, let all the priests who are present also hold over the head of that man [the ordinand] their own hands next to the hands of the bishop." [Our emphasis.]

How very much of a difference, indeed, can one, tiny, little letter make! Please take note, one and all -- CLODDIES, most especially: Another version of the Statuta, this one based on Italian manuscripts -- first printed by the Ballerinis in 1757 and later by Migne and then by the patrologist Dom Germain Morin (with some variants), whose text Andrieu reproduced in 1951-- argues for the plural  HANDS.

Now, even the one or two less mentally challenged of the zombie CLODs can see what we mean about the necessity of having an education before venturing onto treacherous intellectual terrain, where only the educated and literate should tread. So, give yourself a break: ignore Tony Baloney in everything he writes or speaks.

Fuggeddabout that grossly incompetent Work of Human Hands, the savagely icy Schiavo opinion, and the impious suppression of the Leonine prayers. It's all so very, very, very wrong. Don't you agree?

Whaddaya say, Mr. Introibo Ad Altare? Remember, you did ask for --no, did demand --  it, didn't you?