More Incense, Less Nonsense!

One of the better Botafumeiro videos out there.  The Pope.  The Botafumeiro.  Filmed with a real camera, not someone's phone.  Alas it lacks the dramatic nature of the one - somewhere on youtube.com - in which the combination of an overmatched camera, some fortuitous glare, and a full load of incense make the thing look like a glowing meteor streaking across the transepts with a full tail of smoke.  (Indeed, watching Benedict's stinginess with the incense I wondered if Spain had their own version of OSHA, but of course OSHA wouldn't allow any such thing unless everyone in the workplace, er, cathedral had hardhats... at least) But this one is much clearer and there are some unique perspectives, also the sound is decent; you can actually hear the words of the Himno al Apostol Santiago...


 
Don't misunderstand me - I *know* stuff like this is pretty much inessential to eternal salvation.  But Catholic worship has always been distinctively sensuous and there's nothing wrong with doing things on an outsized scale in church - we're there to worship the God if infinite power and majesty after all.  And for the past 45 years the liturgical "experts" have been introducing an endless stream of novelties in an effort to make the liturgy more "relevant" and "interesting" while eliminating the notions of power and majesty.
 
Bah!  This is no novelty, no meaningless liturgical entertainment. They've been doing it for at least ten centuries.  They had to, to relieve the interesting odors presented by hundreds of pilgrims camping inside the Cathedral!  And for goodness sake, the thing had already been in use for a few hundred years when Catherine of Aragon - you may remember her - stopped by in 1499 on the way to England to marry the heir to the British throne.  During her visit, the Botafumeiro parted company with its rope and crashed through a window in one of the transepts.  Maybe she should have taken it as an omen and gone back home...
 
But anyway, this is an ancient tradition, beloved of Compostelians and pilgrims alike, and so what if it happens to be a little bit over-the-top?  When in doubt as to the suitability of a particular liturgical element you can almost always make a proper judgment by asking three questions:
 
1.) Was it introduced for an actual reason, or as an experiment/novelty for the sake of "change"?
 
2.) Did it precede the Council (of Trent!)?
 
3.) What would Bugnini have thought of it?
 
I rest my case.

(n.b. get your minds out of the gutter, I said "sensuous", not "sensual"!)