This is very interesting. According to the Summa Theologia, a layman may hear a confession in necessity when a priest is not available. Below is the answer to the question, “Whether it is ever lawful to confess to another than a priest?” from the Summa Theologia Supplementum Tertiæ Partis, 8, 2. Granted this is from the Supplement which was collected/edited after Thomas died.

I answer that, Just as Baptism is a necessary sacrament, so is Penance. And Baptism, through being a necessary sacrament has a twofold minister: one whose duty it is to baptize, in virtue of his office, viz. the priest, and another, to whom the conferring of Baptism is committed, in a case of necessity. In like manner the minister of Penance, to whom, in virtue of his office, confession should be made, is a priest; but in a case of necessity even a layman may take the place of a priest, and hear a person’s confession.

What think ye?

C.S. had many deprecating things to say about the “gin-and-lace” version of Anglo-Catholicism that espoused the strange blend of Anglophilism and the copycatting of all ceremonial French and Italian. He also despised T.S. Eliot who stood as the English poster child of high affected Anglicanism.However, as C.S. Lewis developed his thinking, he became more and more a High Churchman.He believed in Baptismal Regeneration and spoke of Confirmation in a sacramental way, rather than as a mere public affirmation of faith.

Beginning in 1940, he began making his regular confession to an Anglican priest and heartily recommended the practice to others as good for the soul.

With respect to the Eucharist, Lewis most certainly believed in the Real and Abiding Presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species. He said, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object present to your senses.”

Also, he openly affirmed the doctrine of Purgatory. He wrote:

Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they? Would in not break the heart if God said to us, ‘It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy’? Should we not reply, ‘With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.’ ‘It may hurt, you know’ – ‘Even so, sir.’

I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don’t think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. . . . The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.

My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist’s chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am ‘coming round’,’ a voice will say, ‘Rinse your mouth out with this.’ This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But . . . it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed.”

For C.S. Lewis, salvation was not a “once-for-all” event in the life of a believer at which “one gets saved.” Rather it was the ongoing process of crucifying and mortifying the flesh and thus conquering all existing sin one’s life by the Blood of the Christ. In other words, Justification necessitates a very real and necessary Sanctification of the believer. It’s the taking up of the cross of Christ and following Him by he power of the Holy Spirit. God’s grace forgives and transforms. This understanding is also revealed in Lewis’ affinity for the literary theme of “spiritual pilgirmage,” which is found in so many of his writings (Great Divorce, Pilgrim’s Regress, Narnia, Space Trilogy).

If this Sanctification is true and real, it must indeed reach its goal and thus the sanctification and purification of the believer must be brought to completion even if not completed in this life. This after death purification or sanctification is called “Purgatory” by C.S. Lewis and by Roman Catholics. However, like Dante before him, C.S. Lewis places Purgatory within the gates of Heaven. It is in that sense the “forecourt of Heaven.” The place where you are finally scrubbed down before entering the throne room of the King of Kings.

Anyway, as C.S. Lewis grows in importance, especially with the Narnia movies, it’s important to recognize that he falls more in line with the Catholic tradition, which he shares with his friend and mentor J.R.R. Tolkien.

Today is the feast of St John the Divine, Beloved Apostle of Christ. I chose him as my patron saint on my Confirmation day for three reasons:

1) He is the Apostle who laid his head on Christ’s breast at the institution of the Blessed Sacrament, and thus the first devotee of the Sacred Heart. He is also the only Apostle to see Christ’s side riven by the lance and the water and last of Christ’s blood flow from thence. Which leads to reason number two.

2) St John is the only Apostle who stood under the cross of Christ crucified. He is thus the most courageous of the Apostles and I’m sure that this painful event alone served as his martyrdom. It is my suspicion that St John is the only Apostle NOT to be martyred because he had already conformed to the sufferings of Christ by actually being there next to Our Lady. Which leads me to my third reason.

3) St John is the guardian of Blessed Mary and also the first one other than Christ to be called her “son” when Christ said to His Mother, “Behold your son!” St John is also the theologian of the Incarnation, both by his lifelong love and devotion for the Mother of God, but also by His profound record of the Incarnation at the beginning of his Gospel…”In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was made flesh.”

St John loved Christ, he witnessed his passion and death, and he was the divinely elected guardian of the Blessed Virgin. It is my prayer that Christ might also grant me to become one who beholds the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy of Christ, contemplates the sufferings of Christ, and lastly, sees in the Mother of Christ, the beautiful condescension of Christ in His Incarnation by a pure Virgin.

It is my hope that others will also develop a devotion for St John and see him a godly example of what it means to be a “beloved disciple of Christ.”

Happy St John’s Day!

The Act of Uniformity, 1549, required that the new English-language Book of Common Prayer be used exclusively from June 9, 1549. Even after this date certain priests continued to say votive masses. These were said privately in Latin in side-chapels as opposed to the public celebration of the new Communion service in English at the main altar of the church. Instead of using their former names, e.g. a Mass of Our Lady, the priests tried to disguise what they were doing by using a name such as “Our Lady’s Communion”.

This practice was maintained at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, where the bishop Edmund Bonner was not in sympathy with the liturgical reforms.

In the comments below, Young Fogey demonstrated that the Metropolitan featured below is actually the leader of the Malankar Mar Thoma Church which has been protestantized by (guess who!) contacts with Anglicans.

As far as I can tell there are five groups of St Thomas Christians.

Those deriving from the Orienal Orthodox “Monophysite” St Thomas Christians:

Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (“Monophysite” or “Non-Chalcedonian”),
Syro-Malankara Catholic Church (in communion with Rome, ex-”Monophysites”)
Malankara Mar Thoma Church (those reformed orthodox who accepted the Anglican Communion)

Those derving from the “Nestorian” St Thomas Christians:

Church of the East (those who accepted the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East)
Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (in communion with Rome, ex-”Nestorians”)

Is good ol’ St Nick an icon of Christianity or secularism? It’s worth noting that Jews and Muslims don’t get their pictures taken with Santa. It’s a Christian custom as everyone knows. Same goes with Christmas lights, etc.

The Catholic Church of Christ is a new humanity reconstituted and thus has its unique culture that is always interfacing with the world in order to show Christ’s sovereignty over the cosmos. A culture must be rich and whole and that means that Christian culture is not going to be built on Scripture proof texts alone. Nobody can live that way. We can’t violate Scripture, but our lives are not lived on a minute by minute application of biblical proof texts.

The fact that we have a liturgical calendar, traditions, customs (saying God bless you when someone sneezes), architectural structures, symbols, signs (i.e crosses): each point to the reality of Christian culture.

I think Santa Claus is indeed a health custom, as long as he is not allowed to eclipse Christ, which is the case with any saint.

The question is raised, “Can the sacrifical aspect of the Eucharist be accomplished when either the specie of bread or wine is invalid (e.g. barley bread or cider)?”

The following answer is from the Catholic Encyclopedia “Sacrifice of the Mass”:

“While the Consecration as such can be shown with certainty to be the act of Sacrifice, the necessity of the twofold consecration can be demonstrated only as highly probable. Not only older theologlans such as Frassen, Gotti, and Bonacina, but also later theologians such as Schouppen, Stentrup and Fr. Schmid, have supported the untenable theory that when one of the consecrated elements is invalid, such as barley bread or cider, the consecration of the valid element not only produces the Sacrament, but also the (mutilated) sacrifice. Their chief argument is that the sacrament in the Eucharist is inseparable in idea from the sacrifice. But they entirely overlooked the fact that Christ positively prescribed the twofold conscration for the sacrifice of the Mass (not for the sacrament), and especially the fact that in the consecration of one element only the intrinsically essential relation of the Mass to the sacrifice of the Cross is not symbolically represented. Since it was no mere death from suffocation that Christ suffered, but a bloody death, in which His veins were emptied of their Blood, this condition of separation must receive visible representation on the altar, as in a sublime drama. This condition is fulfilled only by the double consecration, which brings before our eyes the Body and the Blood in the state of separation, and thus represents the mystical shedding of blood. Consequently, the double consecration is an absolutely essential element of the Mass as a relative sacrifice.”

It still doesn’t fully answer the question, “What if the bread is consecrated but vinegar wrongly placed in the cup (which cannot be truly consecrated) is not consecrated? What comes of the bread? Do you have a sacrament without sacrifice?

There are many who say that blue is the Sarum color for Advent. This is completely incorrect. Advent Blue is an invention of CM Almy vestment makers in order to sell more vestments.

The oldest English liturgical color sequence is that of Lichfield, c. A.D. 1240 from the statutes of Bishop Pateshull:

Advent and Lent, black
Passiontide, red
Christmas, most precious vestments
St John, Circumcision, BVM, Virgins, St Michael, white
Epiphany, Apostles, Martyrs, St John Baptist, varied colours
St Mary Magdalene, Epiphany till Lent and Pentecost till Advent, according to the will of the sacristan

There also is this instruction appended: “All things must be modified accordin to the means of the church.”

Below is a description of the Sarum color cycle from Percy Dearmer’s The Parson’s Handbook:

Red:
Every Sunday of the Year except in Lent
Passion & Palm Sundays
Good Friday
Martyrs

White:
Only the Blessed Virgin (and NOT for saints who weren’t martyrs)
Lent

Blue:
St Michael

Yellow & Green:
Confessors

Black:
Requiems
Advent and Lent (at a later date)

Incidentally, blue and violet were consider as pertaining to black days and were used in Requeims and eventually Lent and Advent. Blue copes can be seen in depictions of Requiems.

Philipose Mar Chrysostom is the Metropolitan Archbishop of the native Indo-Asian Mar Thomas Church and the successor to the ‘Throne of St Thomas.’ To say the least, his pontifical vestments are fascinating. These Christians trace their Faith back to the evangelizing missions of St Thomas the Apostle.

St. Thomas, the Apostle of Jesus Christ is believed to have landed in AD 52 in Cranganore near Cochin, which was at that time an important seaport on the Malabar Coast, having trade connections with the Middle East in those days. F.E. Keay in his book, A History of the Syrian Church in India has established, from the mention in the book of Kings, of the articles brought to the court of King Solomon from India, that even before the time of Christ, there was trade between the Malabar Coast and Palestine in spices and luxury articles like ivory. Therefore, it was quite natural for Thomas to come to India with the Gospel as the disciples went to different parts of the world in accordance with the commission given to them by Jesus Christ. In the true Apostolic tradition he preached first to the Jewish settlers in and around Cochin, and then worked among the Hindus. Through the ministry of the Word and the many miracles which tradition attributes to him, he brought many high caste Hindus to the Christian faith. It is believed that he organized 7 Christians communities for the use of these Christians, and ordained presbyters from four leading families. The seven churches were, 1. Cranganore (Malankara) 2. Chavakad (Palur) 3. Parur near Alwaye 4. Gokamangalam, 5. Niranam 6. Nilakkal (Chayal) and 7. Quilon (Kalyan). All these places except Nilakkal are near the sea coast. Read more Mar Thomas Christians here.

It is an ancient custom for Christians to have their homes blessed in relation to the feast of Epiphany (Jan 6) which commemorates the coming of the Wise Men to the house of the Holy Family.

“On coming into the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.” (Matt 2:11)

The idea is to set apart your home as a place of Christian hospitality to all those who shall visit your home in the coming New Year, just as the Wise Men came to the house of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. By such an action you are saying, “May those who visit our home, also find Christ here in our midst.”

The concept of house blessings goes back to Christ Himself when He instructed His first ministers to say upon entering a home:

‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. (Luke 10:5)

If something gravely evil has ever occurred in the history of your house (e.g. witchcraft, murder) then you certainly want a house blessing.