Online Edition – Vol. VIII, No. 6: September 2002
ICEL auctioned on eBay
"EXTREMELY RARE! In fact, probably UNIQUE!"
The buyer who "won" the eBay Internet auction September 3 paid $405 for a privately printed copy of the two volume ICEL "Sacramentary" — offered for sale "mint". Said the blurb:
"This set comes from the private collection of a bishop who, wearying of the long wait for the Roman confirmatio and growing daily more disgusted over Curial politics and the manipulation of the Vatican by certain well-funded right-wing American Catholics, had several sets printed and bound. One set is used in his private chapel (and sometimes even in the Cathedral – shhhh!). The remainder are still boxed, awaiting His Excellency’s final disposition. But, as he approaches retirement, he offers this set now exclusively on eBay to those who would like to have these rare and beautiful texts for their own personal study and edification (now don’t go studying them at the altar, with the candles lit and a couple of hundred people present!) While his own episcopal motto is Nova et Vetera (from our Lord’s words in praise of the scribe learned in the kingdom of God who, like the wise householder, can bring forth the New and the Old), our bishop friend in this auction invokes the phrase stamped in the back of every liturgical book published in the NON-ROMAN usage of Milan, the Ambrosian Rite: Ubi fides, ibi libertas: Where the faith is, there is liberty!"
*At left is one of the fifteen pages pictured on the web site, the first part of ICEL’s "original text" for an alternative Exultet for Easter. This auction item was removed from the site soon after the auction closed.
[*Pictured in hard copy edition only]
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