Fr X's blog

Fr X's blog - what does the priest really say?

Posted by Fr John Xylophone

I have been sent a pamphlet called The Great Sermon Handicap, apparently the memoirs of a British theologian called Bertram Wooster. In it I was horrified to detect a number of grave liturgical errors, signs of modernism, and other heresies. As usual, my highlighting in the extracts printed below is in bold and my comments are in red.

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"There are about a dozen hamlets within a radius of six miles, and each hamlet has a church and each church has a parson [the correct term is "priest"] and each parson preaches a sermon [only one?] every Sunday. [No mention of holy days of obligation?] Tomorrow week – Sunday the twenty-third – we're running off the great Sermon Handicap. [They are in a state of mortal sin, discussing a priest's spiritual nourishment of his flock in these terms.] Steggles is making the book. Each parson is to be clocked by a reliable steward of the course, [are they unaware that "clocking" was forbidden by Pope Tempus III in 930?] and the one that preaches the longest sermon wins."

A priest dares to ahow himself in public without proper vestments.

"Why, it’s a sitter for old Heppenstall," I said. [Show respect! The correct term is "Father Heppenstall," or perhaps "Fr H" if he has his own blog.] "He’s got the event sewed up in a parcel. There isn’t a parson [!!] in the land who could give him eight minutes. Your pal Steggles must be an ass, giving him a handicap like that. Why, in the days when I was with him, old Heppenstall [see above] never used to preach under half an hour, and there was one sermon of his on Brotherly Love [I trust that he preached in Latin. However, this is a very dubious subject for a homily] which lasted forty-five minutes if it lasted a second. Has he lost his vim [Latin for "power." We'll let this pass] lately, or what is it?"

The Sermon on the Mount. Vim habet Jesus.

"Why," said Claude, "the first Sunday we were here, we all went to Twingchurch, [a parish unknown to me. Doubtless heretical] and old Heppenstall preached a sermon that was well under twenty minutes. [As agreed at the Synod of Basingstoke (the 1362 rite), all sermons should last exactly ten minutes.] This is what happened. Steggles didn’t notice it, and the Rev. [an insulting term for one of the Church's ordained priests] didn’t notice it himself, but Eustace and I both spotted that he had dropped a chunk of at least half a dozen pages out of his sermon-case as he was walking up to the pulpit. [As mere laymen, they were right not to interrupt the service by drawing attention to the missing pages.]

He sort of flickered [flickered? Such activities are generally regarded as liturgical abuses] when he got to the gap in the manuscript, but carried on all right, and Steggles went away with the impression that twenty minutes or a bit under was his usual form. The next Sunday we heard Tucker and Starkie, [priests unknown to me, so probably dangerous liberals] and they both went well over the thirty-five minutes, so Steggles arranged the handicapping as you see on the card." [At this point I gave up the book in disgust, and drafted a letter to the Pope demanding that this work of blasphemy be banned by the Vatican.]

Another blow against secularism.

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