What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Last year’s predictions – how did I do?

    The UK will begin leaving the EU on 29 March 2019. It will take 10 years to leave, 10 years for it to be evident to the whole country how stupid it was and 10 years to get back in, with none of our current special measures. (Hope this prediction doesn’t come to pass but fear it will).

    Well, we didn’t begin leaving on 29 March 2019 but the clock is ticking. Failed prediction

    The only thing to make EU-positive lefty-liberals to have pause for thought will be the EU Elections in May which will result in big gains for the so-called populist right.

    Well, the populist right did well but not that well. It wasn’t the overwhelming success many predicted. And the liberal left collapsed rather than took notice. Failed prediction.

    No progress towards same-sex marriage in the Church of England, despite much clearer calls for it to happen.

    No progress but the emergence of the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England does offer some encouragement. Prediction fulfilled.

    Significant concerns in many UK dioceses about the cost of bishops, and particularly their spouses, attending the Lambeth Conference in 2020. (Over £5000 each).

    There is undoubtedly concern about this and there’s been some online comment about through the year it but not a major press scandal yet. (Any spouse going to this is complicit in homophobia and expensive homophobia at that). Prediction fulfilled.

    Elizabeth Warren / Beto O’Rourke begin to emerge as the Democratic dream ticket.

    Beto is out, Warren is still in. No dream ticket. Failed Prediction.

    Stricter legislation in connection with drone operators.

    New regulations announced. Prediction Fulfilled.

    Steps towards legalisation of cannabis under serious consideration within SNP.

    SNP did exactly as I predicted. Prediction Fulfilled.

    No referendum on Independence.

    Prediction Fulfilled

    Cyber attacks merging with terrorist attacks.

    Difficult to prove who is behind these things but they are increasingly being regarded together by the security services. New legislation adopted in USA to try to combat it. Am claiming this one as a win. Prediction fulfilled

    One of Scotland’s daily newspapers ceases print publication.

    Not yet. Not yet. Failed prediction.

14 responses to “Liturgical sadness”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Has anyone else been following the series in ‘The Tablet’ taking the Latin Sunday Collects from the Roman Missal (Ordinary Form), printing alongside them the official English translations and then commenting on the Collects?

    The effect the series has on me is not what was intended. I spend much of my time being puzzled and irritated by the looseness of the translations from the Latin – words and phrases left out, new ideas included, and sometimes translations which are at best a paraphrase.

    The point of mentioning this is that what I’ve seen of the new English translation of the Roman Mass is undoubtedly more faithful to the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.

    This will be important to some and, I expect, an irrelevance to others. However, an ecumenical gesture we could make (pause for breathtakingly unpopular suggestion!) would be to incorporate the new relevant parts of the new translation in our own Liturgy. That really *would* show ecumenical goodwill.

    Reply
  2. David |Dah • veed| Avatar
    David |Dah • veed|

    “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.”

    That is certainly debatable. I fail to see that the purpose of the liturgical reforms of the 70s and 80s which resulted in many new liturgical books for most major denominations and prayer books for Anglicans, was to get us all back to the Latin Mass.

    Rome has pretty much cut the rest of us “free” so to speak, as irredeemable for all the heresies of women’s ordination and now GLBT ordinations and same sex blessings, and I am fine with that. I would not go anywhere near the Tiber, but I share Kelvin’s sense of loss of something we pew sitters shared around the world.

    Reply
  3. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Just to clarify, when I wrote “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form” I meant that it was the definitive form for Roman Catholics.

    Reply
  4. Ritualist Robert Avatar
    Ritualist Robert

    Vicky wrote: “… it is unlikely new conversion areas such as China would find Latin accessible.”

    A Roman friend of mine who probably would know said to me the other day that the Catholics in China use the Latin mass because they missed out on the reforms of Vatican II. Does anybody know if this is true?

    I went recently to a Latin mass here in Sydney with the same friend and most of the servers and the priest were from Vietnam … and a good deal of the back-to-the-future seminarians one sees at the papist cathedral seem to be Korean … so I am not sure that the formality of the Latin mass, or a more formal English one will put off Asian converts.

    It’s a pity that the ecumenical implications of this translation exercise haven’t been pondered a bit more.

    Reply

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