At the end of A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge toasts to a new relationship with his long-suffering clerk, Bob Cratchit.

“A Merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a bowl of Smoking Bishop, Bob!”

This oddly named concoction is a potent deep-purple libation named for the color of a bishop’s robe. Perhaps this Christmas, try making it for your family and friends with this recipe from Dickens’ own great-grandson, Cedric:

5 sweet oranges
1 grapefruit
1/4 lb. sugar (or brown sugar)
2 bottles strong red wine
1 bottle ruby port
Cloves
Cinnamon stick

1. Slice oranges and grapefruit in half. Bake in a 350-degree oven for approximately 30 minutes (until fruit turns pale brown).
2. Stab fruit with cloves and place in a warmed earthenware-bowl slow cooker or rice cooker.
3. Add sugar and wine. Cover bowl and let mixture sit for a day or so.
4. Remove the fruit and squeeze the juice back into the wine.
5. Strain the wine through a sieve.
6. Add port and let simmer (but don’t boil) for one hour.
7. Serve in warmed goblets

Cedric Dickens
Drinking with Dickens
New Amsterdam Books, 1990

Paraphrased excerpts from BBC and The Guardian articles:

London — Former prime minister Tony Blair has left the Anglican Church and converted to Roman Catholicism.

His spiritual awakening goes back at least 30 years, to his time as an undergraduate at Oxford, but due to political considerations Tony Blair’s conversion to Catholicism has been a long time coming. He has been attending Catholic mass, often with his family but also occasionally alone, since long before he became prime minister. His wife, Cherie, is a lifelong and practising Catholic, and in accordance with church rules their children have been brought up as Catholics and were sent to church schools.

Mr Blair was received into full communion with the Catholic Church during Mass at Archbishop’s House, Westminster, on Friday [December 21]. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who is the head of Catholics in England and Wales, said: “I am very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church. For a long time he has been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family and in recent months he has been following a programme of formation to prepare for his reception into full communion. My prayers are with him, his wife and family at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, leader of the Anglican church, wished the former prime minister well in his spiritual journey. He said: “Tony Blair has my prayers and good wishes as he takes this step in his Christian pilgrimage.”

Only a Matter of Time

Blair’s wife and children are already Catholic, and there had been speculation he would convert after leaving office. It had in the past been suggested that Mr Blair would wait until after leaving office, to avoid possible clashes such as over his role in appointing Church of England bishops.

Downing Street confirmed the prime minister had converted, but said it was a private matter and it would not comment further.

Mr Blair’s biographer, Anthony Seldon, said the former prime minister’s faith had always been a major influence on his politics. Mr Seldon said: “He’s a profoundly religious figure. Religion brought him into politics in the first place, not reading Labour Party history. Catholicism has been the religion of his wife — Cherie Blair has been incredibly important to him throughout his political life, encouraging him to go into politics and adopting many of his positions, so I think it was the obvious part of the Christian faith for him to come into.”

Better Late than Never?

So why has it taken so long? Almost certainly because of Mr Blair’s sensitivity about the place of Catholicism in British public — and particularly its constitutional — life. The only positions specifically barred to Catholics are marriage to the sovereign or heir to the throne, or becoming sovereign themselves, a legacy of the Act of Settlement that followed the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the deposition of the last Catholic monarch, James II; there has never been a Catholic prime minister.

In the last 40 years Catholics have entered many senior positions in British public life, generally without comment except among the wilder fringes of Protestant Calvinism: in the civil service, the Foreign Office and industry, as MPs and ministers in Conservative and Labour cabinets. The current director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, is a Catholic and, briefly, four years ago, with Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Iain Duncan Smith, leader of the Tories, so were the alternative prime ministers.

But the motives of Catholic politicians have traditionally been regarded with suspicion by non-Catholics, both here [in Britain] and in the US, based on the allegation that they take their orders from the Vatican rather than the electorate. Catholic political leaders have always denied it — but the recent antics of some bishops in the US during the 2004 presidential campaign when they threatened to deny John Kerry communion because of his support for abortion rights and, recently, Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s warning that he would do the same in Scotland, have tended to confirm old suspicions.

The criticism of Ruth Kelly when she was education secretary because of her membership of the lay sect Opus Dei — at a time when the novel The Da Vinci Code had made the group more widely known — also showed that the old prejudice could still be deployed. Mr Blair probably thought he could do without the extra hassle.

Blair has kept his personal religious views largely out of his political life. Ostentatious religiosity does not go down well in Britain. He dropped his wish to end a prime ministerial broadcast on the eve of the Iraq invasion with the words: “God bless” on the advice of Alastair Campbell, who famously told him “We don’t do God”.

Catholicism in the Public Square

The former Conservative government minister, Ann Widdicombe, who became a Catholic in 1993, told the BBC Mr Blair’s move raised some questions. “If you look at Tony Blair’s voting record in the House of Commons, he’s gone against Church teaching on more than one occasion. On things, for example, like abortion,” she said. “My question would be, ‘has he changed his mind on that?’”

Certainly, a number of potentially divisive moral issues would have been much more difficult if Mr Blair had been known to be a Catholic, even though his personal beliefs have not necessarily intruded into the government’s decisions.

Ministers have enacted civil partnerships for gay couples and this year faced down demands, particularly from the Catholic church, for exemption from equality provisions enabling gay couples to adopt children, even though the prime minister favoured compromise.

Equally, the government has not attempted to limit abortion rights — an issue regarded as long settled in Britain except by some mainly Catholic groups — or pushed for reduced time limits, even though the church regards abortion as a sin. And it has permitted stem cell research without conceding to Catholic opposition.

Mr Blair, like President George Bush, ignored the condemnations and warnings of the Pope and all other church leaders over the war in Iraq.

The ‘O Antiphons’ (or ‘Greater Advent Antiphons’) are recited during the Octave before Christmas — a special period in Advent preparation. The Catholic Education Resource Center describes the importance of the O Antiphons as twofold: “Each one hilights a title for the Messiah: O Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord), O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse), O Clavis David (O Key of David), O Oriens (O Rising Sun), O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations), and O Emmanuel.”

According to Professor Robert Greenberg of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Benedictine monks arranged these antiphons to form an accrostic, such that the first letter from each in reverse order (Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai and Sapientia) combined to spell ero cras, meaning “Tomorrow, I will come.”

See also:

• O Antiphons (Catholic Encyclopedia)
• What are the ‘O Antiphons’? (Catholic Education Resource Center)
• O Antiphons (Wikipedia)
• Audio recordings of the Antiphons from the North American College Choir, from Fish Eaters.

On the Wednesday of Ember week in Advent, the Mystery of the Annunciation is commemorated by many Churches. The Mass is sung early in the morning, and the Church is illuminated, as a token that the world was still in darkness when the Light of the world appeared. The Mass is sometimes called the Golden Mass, possibly because in the Middle Ages, the whole of the Mass, or at least the initial letters, were written in gold — or on account of the golden magnificence of the solemnity and the special, great, ‘golden’ grace which, at that time, is obtained by numerous prayers. It is also called the Rorate Mass after the first words of the Introit of the Mass, Rorate Cœli:

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson announced with New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios that they will begin production of a movie adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. New Line Cinema, the production studio responsible for the hugely successful trilogy based on Tolkien’s masterwork, The Lord of the Rings, (and strangely, also for the recent adaptation of The Golden Compass by militant atheist Phillip Pullman), has recently settled litigation with Jackson regarding pending payments from The Fellowship of the Ring.

For current information on The Hobbit, check the official site, The Hobbit Blog, and the unofficial fan site, The Hobbit Movie.com. For more information on The Lord of the Rings, see The Lord of the Rings site by Houghton Mifflin Publishers.

In its first form, Advent consisted of 40 days, like Lent, and was likewise a penitential time of preparation. Then, in the ninth century, Pope St. Nicholas I reduced it to four weeks. By the 12th century, the fasting which paralleled Lenten discipline was changed to simple abstinence.

Like Lent’s ‘Lætare Sunday’ (which also means ‘rejoice’), Gaudete Sunday urges us to gladness in the middle of this time of expectation and penance. The coming of Jesus approaches more and more. St. John, the holy precursor, announces to the Jews the coming of the Savior. “The Savior,” he says to them, “lives already among us, though unknown. He will soon appear openly.” The liturgical celebration itself is designed to encourage the faithful with this brighter tone of joyful expectation — e.g., in the liturgical antiphons, the permission of flowers and the use of rose instead of darker purple as the liturgical color.

The relaxed solemnity of this week in Advent encourages pilgrims on their way through life, anticipating the approaching celebration of the Incarnation of Christ, whose joy keeps ‘leaking through’ the penitential preparation for it. Now is the time for fervent prayers and for imploring Jesus to remain with us by His mercy. Let us prepare the way for Him by repentance and penance and by a worthy reception of the Sacraments. All the prayers of this Mass are filled with what the Church wishes our souls to possess at the approach of the Savior.

Related stories: Fr. Rutler’s thoughts on Gaudete Sunday; Lætare Sunday.
See also: Gaudete Sunday (Catholic Encyclopedia)

In Winter Bells, you play the part of a snow bunny. See how many bells you can hit in one jump! This cute seasonal game can get addictive!