In the Heart of Lutherdom

Tanunda has four Lutheran churches – all within walking distance of each other, in this prosperous town in the heart of the Barossa Valley, centre of antipodean Lutherdom.

The local Herald lists nineteen Lutheran parishes in the Barossa, all with multiple Sunday services in various locales.  Contrast that with the sole Catholic parish encompassing the whole Barossa Valley!

On the way out of Tanunda toward Greenock yester-day (Tuesday the 14th), I stopt to take a picture of a sample Lutheran church: Gnadenfrei (rather confusingly bearing “St Michael’s” as a middle name), adjoining the tiny locality of Marananga, right in amongst the vines, with a graveyard of former parishioners out the back.

(A quick search turned up the following link, giving interesting pictures of the interior, including a cute little altar with rails and reredos of the Good Shepherd, as well as overlong details of the church organ!  Apparently Gnadenfrei was the original name of the area, but during World War I many of the names were changed – as most famously Kaiser Stuhl was renamed Mount Kitchener.)

Just a short distance further on, up a hill overlooking Seppeltsfield, was a Greek temple approached by a steep path flanked by palm trees – the Seppelt family mausoleum, erected 1927.  Walking up around and past it, I came to the summit and looked out over the adjoining field, to be stared back at by four assorted alpacas.

I trust Lutherans will not reject my prayer for the repose of those within the mausoleum; I am told by a reputable Pastor that prayer for the dead may be tolerated “in private”.

Seppeltsfield itself, that famous winery, with its huge buildings old and new, was larger to my mind than New Norcia.  How extraordinary, that the German Lutherans who fled Prussia for the Province of South Australia, preferring perpetual exile to the impious designs of King Frederick (who amalgamated his Lutheran and Calvinist subjects into one Protestant body, to the horror of strict Lutherans), and settled down on their new farms to live humble lives in godly piety, have ended up not just prosperous but the rich possessors of world-class vineyards.

We headed up to the Clare Valley – that other celebrated wine region, but settled by Irish, not Germans – via Kapunda (mispronounced amusingly as “Kaputka”, which I fear is in Siberia instead), and enjoyed a most scenic drive through astonishingly verdant farmland, every creek and rill bursting with swift-flowing torrents after the recent heavy rain.  There is something very restorative about a pastoral landscape.  The bright yellow fields of canola were particularly eye-pleasing.

After an extremely delicious late lunch at Skillogalee Winery (I recommend their 2010 riesling), we paid a visit to the Jesuits at Sevenhill, where the good father and brothers have made Australia’s sacramental wine for a century and a half.  I took the opportunity to at last read Lauds for to-day, the Feast of the Holy Cross, in the graceful church of St Aloysius.

Did I mention that Tanunda also has a very good secondhand and antiquarian bookshop?  I found a copy of Fr Lasance’s well-known prayerbook, and Maritain’s The Peasant of the Garonne, amongst other items of interest.

Off to Adelaide

Time for a little holiday: off to Adelaide and the Barossa Valley for five days...

I hope to catch up with friends, not least by dropping by the Latin Mass attended by "Tradelaideans", seeing some Dominicans, and even visiting some Lutherans of my acquaintance (for South Australia is the centre of antipodean Lutherdom).

At the least I hope to drink good red wine in this heartland of the grape:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, 

There's always laughter and good red wine.

At least I've always found it so. 

Benedicamus Domino!

— Hilaire Belloc

Happy 173rd

While to the rest of the inhabited earth to-day is if anything the feast of the Holy Innocents (Childermas), to-day, the 28th of December, is Proclamation Day to the good people of South Australia (to which day the holiday is transferred this year; normally they get the actual holiday on Boxing Day), the anniversary of the establishment of their State as a British colony back in 1836, shortly after the arrival of the first free settlers; the Letters Patent of King William IV granting the power, the proclamation was read, which reading has been repeated at the official ceremony marking this event ever since:

By His Excellency John Hindmarsh, Knight of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order, Governor and Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Province of South Australia:

In announcing to the colonists of His Majesty’s Province of South Australia, the establishment of the Government, I hereby call upon them to conduct themselves on all occasions with order and quietness, duly to respect the laws, and by a course of industry and sobriety, by the practice of sound morality and a strict observance of the Ordinances of Religion, to prove themselves worthy to be the Founders of a great free colony.

It is also, at this time especially, my duty to apprize the Colonists of my resolution, to take every lawful means for extending the same protection to the Native Population as to the rest of His Majesty’s subjects and of my firm determination to punish with exemplary severity all acts of violence or injustice which may in any manner be practiced or attempted against the Natives who are to be considered as much under the safeguard of the Law as the Colonists themselves, and equally entitled to the privileges of British subjects. I trust therefore, with confidence to the exercise of moderation and forbearance by all Classes in their intercourse with the Native Inhabitants, and that they will omit no opportunity of assisting me to fulfil His Majesty’s most gracious and benevolent intentions toward them by promoting their advancement in civilization and ultimately, under the blessing of Divine Providence, their conversion to the Christian Faith.

By His Excellency’s Command,

Robert Gouger

Colonial Secretary

God Save the King!

Breviary Offices versus OF Masses

As I'm now in Tasmania, and have been serving the Christmas Masses at Carmel, it's been back to a (quite acceptable) Novus Ordo; and one benefit of serving has been that I've been able to receive communion, kneeling, from our visiting priest, under both species.  (Some traddies have weird reservations about touching the chalice, but that's mad.)

In the Ordinary Form, to-day is the feast of the Holy Family, while according to the Breviary it's the Sunday in the Christmas Octave, and the Holy Family won't be feasted until Sunday the 11th of January.  (Ever since Benedict XV extended this feast to the whole world, it's been difficult to find an older Sunday to push aside so as to fit it in: and I must say it seems to me better to have the Holy Family celebrated in the Octave than after Epiphany.)

Indeed, there's plenty of confusion coming up; while the Octave of Christmas is really just about equivalent to the Solemnity of Mary Mater Dei, as a glance at the respective Offices demonstrates, here in Australia the bishops in their wisdom have transferred the Epiphany to the nearest Sunday, meaning that this year on Sunday the 4th in the Breviary I'll be celebrating the Most Holy Name of Jesus, while perforce I'll hear Mass of the Epiphany, whose Office will occur on the Tuesday; and the same thing will occur with the Baptism of the Lord...

And last but not least, to-day is Childermas, the Feast of the Holy Innocents (read more here), which took precedence over the Sunday until the last preconciliar simplification of the rubrics; Fr alluded in his homily to the truth that Our Lord sanctified the whole course of human life from conception onwards, and one might think that in this dark age of widespread fœtal murder, to have the child-victims of raging Herod commemorated even on a Sunday would be no bad thing.  

(Don't forget, BTW, that to-day is Proclamation Day in South Australia, marking the 172nd anniversary of that Province.)

Proclamation Day

Adelaide: the city of churches, a beaut spot, and one friends of mine hail from.  Well, to salute them and their compatriots, I recall that today is Proclamation Day – on the 28th of December 1836, Governor Hindmarsh at the Old Gum Tree, Glenelg (see image above), read the proclamation of the British Province of South Australia.  It was to be a model colony, for free settlers only, unlike the other Australian colonies...  

Some think they can distinguish a South Australian accent, but in reality all there is to it is a small collection of local words and a minute difference in pronouncing one vowel before "l".  To a non-Australian, the difference would be negligible.  South Australia was meant to be different, too, in that it was to have been a home away from Home for Dissenters, even above Anglicans; but happily the Irish and other Roman Catholics found their way in anyway.

If England had come back to the Faith, say, if Philip and Mary had had a child, or if the Armada had succeeded, then the patron saints of South Australia would have been the Holy Innocents, and Childermas accounted there, not a day of bad, but of good omen.