Candlemas already. The hampers have been emptied; the cards have been taken down; the paper chains made patiently on Christmas Eve committed hara-kiri weeks ago. Meanwhile I have finally got to grips with a splendid gift kindly sent by the lovely people at the Catholic Mothers Apostolate.
“The Catholic Card Game” is a cleaned-up ecclesiological version of “Cards against Humanity”, with which some readers may be fam-iliar. Opening and closing phrases are randomly matched to create a sentence that is either nonsensical, humorous or perhaps inadvertently spot on. It is less ribald than the original version, which is probably best played long after Granny has gone to bed.
In bold black lettering it proclaims that it is “a game the Pope could play”. People might want to tread carefully the next time the Holy Father pops around, however. One of the openers I drew was “the topic of the next Papal Encyclical”, which immediately and unnervingly paired itself up with “the Extraordinary Form of the Mass”. Where would one look?
Perhaps at Christmas the holly-decked halls of the Vatican rang with the laughter of amaranthine-cinctured monsignori, taking a seasonal break from their labours. Then again, perhaps not. Even so, as GK Chesterton once said: “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it,” and this little yellow box certainly raised a smile.
The concept of actively enjoying religion may seem like a contradiction in terms, given that it’s meant to be there for our metaphysical enlightenment and spiritual edification. There can be a tendency to guilt, then, if we go to a service and come away remembering little except the quality of the singing, or the scent of the flowers, or the beauty of the vestments.
And yet, why shouldn’t we enjoy those things, if we have the cognitive capacity to appreciate them? Furthermore, why shouldn’t presumably God-given talents be put to use in praise of their giver? The creative arts have been at the disposal of the Church since the catacombs. Enjoyment of the good things that God gives us is in its own way an offering of praise.
And so without quibbling we can relish the beauty of a Mozart Mass, or delight in the scent of towers of lilies either side of the sanctuary, or wonder at the intricate needlework of a chasuble that we could hardly have made ourselves. Let’s not forget that we’re called to worship God in “the beauty of holiness”. If He delights in nice things, then we are allowed to as well.
This was something that Pope Benedict understood and modelled. As Alex Dimminger writes elsewhere in this edition, “he opened the cupboards, dusted off that which had been shoved to the back of the shelves, and reminded us that the Church is not a museum but a living entity”. And so it was that the Vatican sacristies gladly yielded up their treasures.
Much has been written recently about what Pope Benedict wore, and what he didn’t. What has been striking has been how many commentators thought that anything that hadn’t been seen for a while was somehow a departure from modern custom, and that things abolished were being restored. The frequent implication, of course, was of retrogression.
Here, then – and accurate as far as I can tell – is what he did and didn’t do on the fashion front, because it only seems fair that someone should set the record straight. I’ve used John XXIII as the cut-off point, and have excluded John Paul I, because of the brevity of his reign: who knows what he might have pulled out of the drawers?
Benedict XVI did not restore to papal dress the red shoes or the red cappello romano (the round wide-brimmed hat). John Paul II wore them, although later on exchanged the scarlet slippers for burgundy ones. Nor did he restore the fanon, the vestigial papal poncho that goes over the chasuble and under the pallium: it was worn by John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.
What Benedict did restore was the paschal mozzetta of cream brocade, last worn by Paul VI. The same applied, I think, to the red winter one lined with fur – but then he came to the papacy at 78 and large churches can be draughty. The camauro, a warm fur-lined red hat also made a comeback, having been most recently sported by John XXIII.
The last was short lived, however, because people said it made him look like Father Christmas – which it did. Nevertheless these were items not plucked from Pope Benedict’s imagination, nor from the catalogue of a long defunct ecclesiastical couturier, but chosen with intent for their resonant continuity with the practice of his most recent predecessors.
Pope Francis doesn’t use any of them, which is his prerogative. But there will be nothing to stop his successor donning them, which will be his. And if he does, we can surely rejoice in them because they will be made and worn to the glory of God. As for the Father Christmas hat, well – let’s just wait and see.
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