Mass of Ages Winter 2017

Mass of Ages The quarterly magazine of the Latin Mass Society

Issue 194 – Winter 2017

FREE

Ramsgate: where St Augustine first preached

Š John Aron

The Wonder of the Incarnation: Bishop Michael Campbell OSA with a meditation for Advent and Christmas Plus: news, views, Mass listings and nationwide reports

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Contents

CONTENTS

5 Chairman’s Message

Inestimable value

Joseph Shaw on why respect for tradition matters 6 LMS Year Planner – Notable Events 7 Liturgical calendar 8 The Wonder of the Incarnation

Bishop Michael Campbell OSA with a meditation for Advent

and Christmas 10 In the wilderness

Joseph Shaw reviews Una Voce: The History of the Foederatio

Internationalis Una Voce 1964-2003, by Leo Darroch 12 An age of faith

Homily preached by Mgr Antony Conlon in St Augustine’s, Snave 14 Priest to the Poor Clares

Shaun Bennett remembers The Reverend Dom Antony Tumelty OSB 15 Roman report

The 6th Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage shows more than ever the

universal character of the traditional Latin liturgy, says Alberto Carosa 16 Reports from around the country

What’s happening where you are 24 Art and Devotion

Caroline Shaw on The Nativity by Piero Della Francesca (c1470-75)

at The National Gallery, London 26 The Smile of Heaven

Mary O’Regan on the significance of the number 13 27 Praying for Tolkien

Matt Showering reports on the great writer’s devotion to the

Blessed Sacrament 28 Letters

You have your say 30 Catholic traditions

Joseph Shaw looks at the history of the Christmas crib 31 Tread carefully

Do we still believe in the Devil? asks Fr Bede Rowe 32 Learning Latin

Clare Bowskill reports from a recent course 33 Mass listings 40

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Classics for children Alisa Kunitz Dick on teaching Greek and Latin The war against women Faith doesn't compromise on the Truth, says the Lone Veiler Where St Augustine first preached John Coverdale reports on a magnificent work of restoration in Ramsgate

Crossword and classified advertisements 47 Macklin Street

Summorum Pontificum – 10 years on The Latin Mass Society 11-13 Macklin Street, London WC2B 5NH Tel: 020 7404 7284 editor@lms.org.uk Mass of Ages No. 194 Cover image: Bishop John Sherrington, confirmations. © John Aron

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Due to the considerable volume of emails and letters received at Mass of Ages it is regrettably not always possible to reply to all correspondents.

6 42 PATRONS: Sir Adrian Fitzgerald Bt, Lord (Brian) Gill, Sir James MacMillan CBE, Colin Mawby KSG, Charles Moore COMMITTEE: Dr Joseph Shaw – Chairman; Kevin Jones – Secretary; David Forster – Treasurer; Paul Beardsmore – Vice President; Paul Waddington – Vice President; James Bogle, Eric Friar; Alisa Kunitz-Dick; Antonia Robinson; Roger Wemyss Brooks.

Registered UK Charity No. 248388 MASS OF AGES: Editor: Tom Quinn Design: GADS Ltd Printers: Bishops DISCLAIMER: Please note that the views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the Latin Mass Society or the Editorial Board. Great care is taken to credit photographs and seek permission before publishing, though this is not always possible. If you have a query regarding copyright, please contact the Editor. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission.

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CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

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CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

Inestimable value Joseph Shaw on why respect for tradition matters

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s the debate on the meaning and significance of Pope Francis’ Exhortation Amoris laetitia rumbles on, I was struck by the remark, on Twitter, of an American theologian, Massimo Faggioli: ‘[The] Problem is the theological view conveyed by some of the most active promoters of the Old Mass – theological views that are not Catholic any more.’

When I managed to lift my jaw off the floor, I read the article he had just published to which this tweet, one of a series, alluded, to see if this really was what he thought.

His article, alas, was more nuanced only in ways which made things worse.

His understanding of the theological rupture in the Church’s history included Vatican II as part of a theologica recentior, but various statements of Pope St John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI as part of the theologica antiquior. You can’t actually put a date on it: whatever he liked was modern and correct, and whatever he didn’t was out of date and wrong.

We shouldn’t pay too much attention to the ramblings of one rather obscure theologian, but he has noticed something which is right: attachment to the ancient Mass is associated with a view of theology, as well as of the liturgy, which does not dismiss out of hand everything which has roots in the past.

It might be thought that it would be better for those attached to the Extraordinary Form to travel light, and not associate their cause with anything else controversial: to fight one battle at a time. I know that this is not how the Latin Mass Society’s members and supporters usually feel, however.

On the contrary, while the case for the holiness and beauty of the Vetus Ordo can stand on its own feet, the Mass we love points beyond itself, to the God it worships and the praying Church which it serves. It points not only to the theological truths it teaches directly, like the communion of Saints, and the reality of sin and grace, but to the antiquity, majesty, and authority of the Church’s teaching in general.

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In thinking of the role of the Traditional Mass, and its adherents, in the wider Church, it is not only in the directly liturgical area in which we bring a gift to the Church. The preservation of the ancient Mass is something of inestimable value for the whole Church, even for those who do not make it a regular part of their devotional lives. Something else of great value, however, is the existence of a robust community of believers whose respect for tradition carries over into the theological sphere.

The prophet Jeremiah makes this point very beautifully in relation to the Rechabites of his own day (Jer 35). This was a community of Judeans who stuck literally to the command of an ancestor of theirs not to drink wine, and to live only in tents. These practices are symbolic of a special commitment to holiness of life and dependence on God, but they must have struck many of their contemporaries as archaic and unnecessary in the extreme.

Jeremiah, however, contrasts the Rechabites’ fidelity with the widespread impiety and even apostacy of mainstream Judean society. The Rechabites were a witness of fidelity to tradition in ancient Judea, a witness others sorely needed: even if other Judeans were not personally obliged to abstain from wine or live only in tents.

When it comes to the moral teachings of the Church, Catholics attached to the ancient liturgy can almost always be relied upon to hold fast also to the ancient and unchangeable teaching of the Church, coming from the Apostles, the Fathers and Doctors, and from Our Lord

and Saviour Himself. This fidelity, indeed, is required of Catholics: not to attach themselves to the latest novelty, but as St Paul writes (2 Thess 2:15): Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle. (Itaque fratres state et tenete traditiones quas didicistis, sive per sermonem sive per epistulam nostrum.)

Readers may be interested to know that, at the recent General Assembly of the Fœderatio Internationalis Una Voce (FIUV, or Una Voce International), I was re-elected to the Council and also appointed Secretary. The President, Felipe Alanís Suárez of Mexico, was reelected for a second term. The Treasurer, Monika Rheinschmitt of Germany, was reappointed.

It is an honour to serve in this remarkable multi-national organisation.

I review a book on its remarkable history in this edition of Mass of Ages (see pages 10-11).

‘You know, George, I think I'd rather enjoy Limbo’ From Cracks in the Clouds by Dom Hubert van Zeller OSB (erstwhile Br Choleric) 1976.

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EVENTS

LMS Year Planner – Notable Events Saturday, 18 November 2017 Confirmation in the Traditional Rite. Our annual celebration of the Sacrament of Confirmation will take place in St James's Church, Spanish Place, London W1U 3QY at 11.30am, it will be followed by Pontifical Benediction. The celebrant will be the Rt Rev. John Sherrington, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster.

Sunday, 24 December 2017 – Christmas Eve Midnight Mass of Christmas High Mass at 6pm in St Mary Moorfields, Eldon Street, London EC2M 7LS to celebrate the arrival of Christmas.

Advance notice of some of the events planned for 2018 Saturday, 24 February 2018 LMS Pilgrimage to Caversham Friday, 2 – Sunday, 4 March 2018 Guild of St Clare Sewing Retreat at the Carmelite Retreat Centre, Boars Hill, Oxfordshire.

Holy Week Celebration of the Sacred Triduum in St Mary Moorfields.

Friday, 6 April – Sunday, 8 April 2018 St Catherine’s Trust Family Retreat and Gregorian Chant Network Weekend.

Monday, 9 April – Thursday, 12 April 2018 Residential training conference for priests, deacons, seminarians and laymen wishing to learn to celebrate or serve Mass in the Extraordinary Form at Prior Park College, Bath

© John Aron

FACTFILE Details of all our events can be found on our website, together with booking and payment facilities where applicable. Go to lms.org.uk

The Sacrament of Confirmation

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LITURGICAL CALENDAR/NEWS

Liturgical calendar

NOVEMBER 2017 Sun 12 XXIII SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 13 S DIDACUS C III CI W Tue 14 S JOSAPHAT B M III Cl R Wed 15 S ALBERT the GREAT B C D III Cl W Thu 16 S GERTRUDE V III Cl W Fri 17 S GREGORY THAUMATURGUS B C III Cl W Sat 18 DEDICATION of the BASILICAS of SS PETER & PAUL Aps III Cl W Sun 19 VI SUNDAY remaining after EPIPHANY II Cl G Mon 20 S FELIX de VALOIS C III CI W Tue 21 PRESENTATION of the BVM III Cl W Wed 22 S CECILIA § V M III Cl R Thu 23 S CLEMENT I P M III Cl R Fri 24 S JOHN of the CROSS C D III Cl W Sat 25 S CATHERINE V M III Cl R Sun 26 XXIV & LAST SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 27 FERIA IV Cl G Tue 28 FERIA IV Cl G Wed 29 FERIA IV Cl G Thu 30 S ANDREW Ap II Cl R DECEMBER 2017 Fri 1 FERIA IV Cl G Sat 2 S BIBIANA V M III Cl R Sun 3 I SUNDAY of ADVENT I Cl V Mon 4 S PETER CHRYSOLOGUS B C D III Cl W Tue 5 FERIA III Cl V Wed 6 S NICHOLAS B C III Cl W Thu 7 S AMBROSE B C D III Cl W Fri 8 IMMACULATE CONCEPTION of the BVM I Cl W Sat 9 FERIA III Cl V Sun 10 II SUNDAY of ADVENT I Cl V Mon 11 S DAMASUS I P C III Cl W Tue 12 FERIA III Cl V Wed 13 S LUCY V M III Cl R Thu 14 FERIA III Cl V Fri 15 FERIA III Cl V Sat 16 S EUSEBIUS B M III Cl R Sun 17 III SUNDAY of ADVENT (Gaudete Sunday) I Cl V/ROSE Mon 18 FERIA II Cl V Tue 19 FERIA II Cl V Wed 20 EMBER DAY II Cl V Thu 21 S THOMAS Ap II Cl R Fri 22 EMBER DAY II Cl V Sat 23 EMBER DAY II Cl V Sun 24 VIGIL of the NATIVITY of OLJC I Cl V Mon 25 NATIVITY of OLJC I Cl W Tue 26 S STEPHEN Protomartyr II Cl R Wed 27 S JOHN Ap Evangelist II Cl W Thu 28 HOLY INNOCENTS MM II Cl R Fri 29 S THOMAS B M I Cl R Sat 30 VI DAY in the OCTAVE of the NATIVITY II Cl W Sun 31 SUNDAY in the OCTAVE of the NATIVITY II Cl W JANUARY 2018 Mon 1 OCTAVE DAY of the NATIVITY of the LORD I Cl W Tue 2 MOST HOLY NAME of JESUS II Cl W Wed 3 FERIA IV Cl W Thu 4 FERIA IV Cl W Fri 5 FERIA IV Cl W Sat 6 EPIPHANY of the LORD I Cl W Sun 7 HOLY FAMILY JESUS, MARY & JOSEPH § II Cl W Mon 8 FERIA IV Cl W Tue 9 FERIA IV Cl W Wed 10 FERIA IV Cl W Thu 11 FERIA IV Cl W Fri 12 FERIA IV Cl W Sat 13 COMMEMORATION of the BAPTISM of OLJC II Cl W Sun 14 II SUNDAY after EPIPHANY II Cl G Mon 15 S PAUL the FIRST HERMIT C III Cl W Tue 16 S MARCELLUS I P M III Cl R Wed 17 S ANTONY Ab III Cl W Thu 18 FERIA IV Cl G Fri 19 FERIA IV Cl G Sat 20 SS FABIAN P & SEBASTIAN MM III Cl R Sun 21 III SUNDAY after EPIPHANY II Cl G Mon 22 SS VINCENT & ANASTASIUS MM III Cl R Tue 23 S RAYMUND of PENAFORT C III Cl W Wed 24 S TIMOTHY B M III Cl R Thu 25 CONVERSION of S PAUL Ap III Cl W Fri 26 S POLYCARP B M III Cl R Sat 27 S JOHN CHRYSOSTOM B C D III Cl W Sun 28 SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY II Cl V Mon 29 S FRANCIS de SALES B C D III Cl W Tue 30 S MARTINA V M III Cl R Wed 31 S JOHN BOSCO C III Cl W

FEBRUARY 2018 Thu 1 S IGNATIUS B M III Cl R Fri 2 PURIFICATION of the BVM II Cl W Sat 3 OUR LADY’S SATURDAY IV Cl W Sun 4 SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY II Cl V Mon 5 S AGATHA V M III Cl R Tue 6 S TITUS B C III Cl W Wed 7 S ROMUALD Ab III Cl W Thu 8 S JOHN of MATHA C III Cl W Fri 9 S CYRIL of ALEXANDRIA B C D III Cl W Sat 10 S SCHOLASTICA V III Cl W

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Please pray for the souls of all members who have died recently Requiescant in Pace Mary Barnes Yoskyl Brackley Timothy Fawcett Rita Finch Pauline Sutcliffe Antony Tumelty OSB (Priest) Eamonn Whelan (Priest) Every effort is made to ensure that this list is accurate and up-to-date. However, if you know of a recently deceased member whose name has not, so far, appeared on our prayer memorial, then please contact the LMS, see page 3 for contact details.

The LMS relies heavily on legacies to support its income. We are very grateful to the following who remembered the Society in their Will: Thomas Byrne, Margaret Clark, Lucy Partridge and Mary Waddelove If you would like details of how to leave a legacy to the LMS, please contact the Office.

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CATHOLIC TRADITIONS

The Wonder of the Incarnation Bishop Michael Campbell OSA with a meditation for Advent and Christmas

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hrough her liturgical seasons of Advent and Christmas the Church sets before us a rich fare of doctrinal themes and biblical passages which have the purpose of deepening our understanding and appreciation of the wonder of salvation which God has accomplished for us in Christ. By means of her liturgical cycle the Church exercises her maternal teaching role in a preeminent way, forming us spiritually and leading us year by year ever more profoundly, in the Pauline phrase, into the mystery of Christ. Blessed Columba Marmion in his spiritual writings was fond of stressing that each liturgical season has its own distinctive grace, if we but dispose ourselves to it in a spirit of devotion and breathe in its atmosphere.

The four weeks of Advent seem to pass all too quickly, and can easily be overshadowed by the commercial build-up to Christmas so characteristic of current western society. Advent, with its hope and expectation of the coming of God’s Messiah, resonates with the profound longings and aspirations of the human heart. The wonderful selection of scriptural texts, particularly from the prophet Isaiah, seem to arouse and capture the believer’s desire for something more enduring and satisfying than that which our fleeting material world has to offer. Who cannot be moved by the content and mood of those great O antiphons recited or sung in the days leading up to Christmas?

The Advent liturgy invites us, as it were, to transport ourselves spiritually back in time and to make our own the faith and hope of the people of Israel as they looked to Almighty God to make good his promises to Abraham and David and send a saviour from heaven.

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The exclamation of Isaiah captures perfectly such sentiments: Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness, let the earth open, that salvation may sprout forth…

(Is. 45:8). When we reflect prayerfully on the long centuries during which God’s people treasured and pondered the words of the prophets and their Scriptures, often hoping against hope,

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CATHOLIC TRADITIONS we learn the lesson of patience for our own lives. Like the Israelites of old, we are being taught that what matters is God’s time and not our own.

The mind-set of our present age can often demand immediate answers and instant solutions; one grace of the Advent season is that of learning to wait on God patiently but with quiet confidence.

If we allow ourselves to be led by the spirit of the Advent liturgy we can gain a sense of perspective of how God’s plan of salvation gradually evolves and unfolds over many years through the history of Israel, the people he originally and mysteriously chose to be his own. As a small and insignificant power, Israel was subject to those surrounding nations greater than herself, and often at their mercy. Her people would know defeat, subjection and even exile, yet the guiding and salvific hand of God was ever at work throughout that history, directing it towards that moment, ‘the fullness of time’, when ‘God would send his Son, born of a woman…’ (Gal.4:4). As we, in the twenty-first century, live through what appear to be unsettling and uncertain times and a future difficult to discern, the experience of Israel as enshrined in the Scriptural passages, antiphons and hymns of Advent, and her unswerving belief in God, can serve to reassure and point for us a way forward on our journey of faith.

Towards the end of the Advent season the Church sets before us yet again those appealing accounts of the conception and birth of John the Baptist, born to his parents Zechariah and Elizabeth in their later years.

Replete with the atmosphere of Jerusalem Temple piety, the story of John and his parents reminds us how a single conception and birth ultimately reside in the power of God, the Lord of life. We will have heard countless times St Luke’s telling of the Annunciation to Our Lady and the conception of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, yet it touches us and captures our attention whenever we hear it.

When the sanctity and inviolability of human life, especially in the womb, is under threat, the sacred nature of these infancy narratives which are set before us in Advent, should give us cause for pause and prayerful, even sober reflection and atonement.

When we come to the liturgical season of Christmastide I have always

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found the idea of a tableau helpful, a stage-setting of sorts where the various biblical figures from both the Old and the New Testament each have their own unique different part to play in this most sacred of dramas, often termed by biblical exegetes as salvation history. The Preface of Christmas speaks of the ‘wonder of the Incarnation’ and that surely should be the uppermost feeling of the believer throughout this whole liturgical period.

The splendid history that has been the Old Testament has now reached its climax in the child lying in the manger, the principal actor so to speak in this whole divine drama. The Evangelist John, and especially the First Letter of John, read at Christmastide, see in this infant the visible expression and living embodiment of the divine love of the Father for the human race. As we contemplate that scene in the stable at Bethlehem more often than not words can fail us. The Incarnation of the Son of God is indeed a wonder!

Catholic piety loves to dwell on Mary and her role in God’s saving design.

The tranquil nature of the crib setting should, in our meditation, be balanced against the momentous decision of Our Lady when she gave her assent, her fiat, to the angel Gabriel. Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, writing on the Annunciation highlights the confusion and bewilderment of Mary when faced with such a far-reaching choice. The consequences of that decision would be life-long for her, leading ultimately to Calvary and beyond, to Pentecost and the beginning of the Church. We each have our individual part today in furthering God’s plan of salvation for the world, but when assenting to God’s will we can be inspired by the faith and generosity of Mary of Nazareth.

We will never fully understand God’s ways, and the fact that the first to see the new-born child were simple shepherds underscores this truth. A simple thought to enrich our devotion at Christmastide is that the shepherds were going about their work, doing what they knew best. Can we believe that God often chooses to reveal himself as we engage in the ordinary events of everyday, such as earning a living?

Perhaps, in the words of the poet, Francis Thompson, we can miss ‘the many-splendoured thing’. I referred earlier to Advent as being a time of patient waiting, and the Evangelist Luke offers us two wonderful examples

of that patience, in the characters of Simeon and Anna. The old man Simeon had spent his whole life with the assurance of his biblical faith that he would set eyes on the Messiah, God’s anointed one, before he died. Both he and Anna saw their piety rewarded far beyond what they could have imagined.

Their one moment had come and they were there to take full advantage of it.

In our Christmas meditation we could resolve to imitate those two venerable saints of the Old Testament and patiently await God’s time in preference to our own.

We walk by faith and not by sight, and no Christmas figure better exemplifies that than Joseph, the spouse of Mary and foster-father of the child Jesus. He was called upon to take Mary in circumstances he did not fully understand and be a reliable father and protector to her Son. Saint Joseph’s silent presence alongside Mary and the child is often commented on as the example of someone who quietly and obediently does what is asked of him by God. With good reason Joseph is invoked as Patron of the Universal Church. In our moments of prayer before the crib this Christmas time we should ask him to watch over the Church, and guide and guard her on the sea of history as he once did Mary and her special child.

On their long pilgrimage through history the people of Israel met opposition from hostile powers without and weakness within. The figures of the Magi in our Christmastide tableau recall the cruel Herod and his evil desire to destroy the child Jesus. These wise men ‘from the East’ encountered doubt and opposition in their search for the king whose star they followed and eventually found, and worship the one whom every heart desires. We may reflect that finding and following Christ ‘the desire of the nations’ is not always easy or straightforward.

As the Christmas liturgical season comes to a close the perseverance and determination of the Magi can give us hope on our lifelong journey towards him who is and remains our heart’s desire.

‘We each have our individual part today in furthering God’s plan of salvation for the world, but when assenting to God’s will we can be inspired by the faith and generosity of Mary of Nazareth’

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REVIEW

In the wilderness Joseph Shaw reviews Una Voce: The History of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce 1964-2003, by Leo Darroch

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eo Darroch has produced a substantial and fascinating volume on the FIUV, commonly known as Una Voce International, from its beginnings up to the end of the presidency of the late Michael Davies. Davies’ predecessor, Eric de Savanthem, was President for 30 years, from the early days of the organisation, so the book revolves around these two remarkable men.

Because of the nature of the material, the book is episodic in character. Some of these episodes are very revealing about the state of the Church at the time they took place, so I will devote this review to three of them.

The first is the interview and associated correspondence which took place between de Saventham and Archbishop (later, Cardinal) Giovanni Benelli, then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in 1976 (pp127ff ). De Saventham summarised Benelli’s position in a letter to him following the meeting: Your Excellency has urged us to espouse as a matter of conscience the new forms of the Church’s public cult... Although the character of irreformability only attaches to definitions, promulgated ex cathedra in matters of faith and morals, [you asserted that] the assent due to the acts of the Sovereign Pontiff ought equally to express itself in humble obedience to those of his acts which merely concern the discipline or other nondoctrinal aspects of the government of the Church. For there also, you said, it is the same one and indivisible charisma which guarantees that all these acts cannot but be ordered towards the true and certain good of the Church.

Consequently, you could only consider as reckless and irreconcilable with a proper ecclesiology all demands or initiatives which implied that the utility of such and such an act of government duly promulgated by the reigning Pontiff or under his authority

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could be a subject of discussion or even contestation.

Cardinal Benelli did not dispute the accuracy of this summary. What it amounts to - as Dr de Savanthem goes on to explain at some length, though not in these terms - is an extreme Ultramontanism, the view that imbues the reigning Pope’s prudential decisions with something close to infallibility, and his wishes with a force approaching that of Divine Law. The prevalence of such attitudes in Rome is part of the explanation of why things were so difficult for Una Voce in the 1970s and later. It was a more balanced, one might say a more grown-up, view of the charism of the Papacy which led to the concessions which were made, by Pope Paul VI in the ‘English Indult’ (permission for the Old Mass) of 1971, Pope St John Paul II in the 1984 and 1988 indults, Pope Benedict XVI in the motu proprio of 2007, and indeed with Pope Francis’ concessions to the SSPX more recently.

These Popes realised that even the best-intended initiatives don’t always work out well, for everyone, and that even a Pope can make mistakes.

The 1984 indult specified that the Mass to be celebrated under its terms was to be in accordance with the liturgical books of 1962, with no mixing of the old and new books. The 1988 indult said that the earlier indult should be applied ‘generously’; at the same time the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) was established with the ancient Mass as its special charism; other ‘traditional’ communities and institutes followed.

One of the strangest things in the book, however, is the attitude of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei (PCED) in the 1990s, specifically after the retirement of its first President, the Benedictine, Paul, Cardinal Mayer, in 1991. Officials there developed a convoluted argument to the effect that the clause of the 1984 indult which

forbade the mixing of old and new books no longer applied, and further claimed that reference to ‘1962’ included all the changes effective in 1965 and 1967, since these were promulgated as Instructions rather than a new ‘typical edition’ of the Missal. This turned out to be part of a programme to bring Catholics attached to the Vetus Ordo into the mainstream, by bringing their Masses into closer and closer conformity with the Reform.

Antonio, Cardinal Innocenti, the second President of the PCED, went so far as to tell visiting bishops not to bother implementing the indult since it was a merely transitional arrangement. To his embarrassment, one such bishop (Dermot O’Sullivan of Kerry, Ireland) artlessly repeated this opinion, in writing, to one of the Faithful who had requested permission for a Latin Mass, on Fellici’s authority, and this was passed back to the FIUV (pp289ff).

When Darío, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, was appointed as fourth President in 2000, preparations were well under way within the PCED for an Instruction which would have made the 1965 version of the books compulsory for use under the Indult. That would mean, for example, the removal of the Preparatory Prayers at the start of Mass, and the Last Gospel, with options for the use of the vernacular for most of Mass, and for celebration ‘facing the people’. It was only the vociferous protests of the FIUV, under Michael Davies, which put a stop to this extraordinary project (pp362ff ).

A final, and rather sad, story from the book is that of the petition to ask Pope St John Paul II to celebrate the ancient Mass himself in St Peter’s, or else to ask a cardinal to do so (pp335ff ).

This was begun by the Latin Mass Society under the late Christopher Inman. The petition pointed out that since the 1988 Indult the old Mass had not so much as been mentioned in any papal speech or document, except for one occasion on which Pope St John

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Paul II had addressed a traditional monastic community. Despite the important legal recognition of the 1962 Missal, the whole issue seemed to have been buried.

With the help of the FIUV, the petition became a worldwide one, to be signed by 71 leaders of lay groups and 14 leaders of priestly and religious associations. The LMS went to great trouble to ensure that it be presented in an attractive way, having a beautiful hand-painted, framed panel memorialising the petition prepared, and binding the main document to the highest standards. It was handdelivered to the Prefect of the Papal Household on 26 October 1998, and the Traditional Catholic world waited for a response.

Despite numerous reminders and requests, only its receipt was ever officially acknowledged: never that it had been passed on to the Pope himself, and never with any kind of reply. This attempt to break through official hostility and indifference was, alas, a complete failure: except, perhaps, sub specie aeternitatis. Its request was finally granted when Raymond, Cardinal Burke celebrated the Mass of Ages in St Peter’s on 10 October 2009.

Leo Darroch’s important book contains valuable insights into every major development in the treatment of the Traditional Mass over the long period of time it covers, and makes clear the important role of the FIUV. It will be an indispensable work of reference for scholars and historians, as well as being of interest to anyone who wants to become well informed about the treatment of our liturgical patrimony during its long time in the wilderness.

Una Voce: The History of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce 1964-2003, by Leo Darroch and published by Gracewing is available from the LMS bookshop, £25 + P&P.

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FEATURE

An age of faith Homily preached by Mgr Antony Conlon in St Augustine’s, Snave

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lmost to the day and hour, exactly 460 years ago, two clerics made a special visit to the church of St Mary in the Marsh, Kent.

They had been sent by Cardinal Pole, who was Archbishop of Canterbury at that time. Their task, to carry out a routine visit of the church, checking the extent of recovery and replacement within the building of the various articles required for Catholic worship, as well as the overall state of the parish and its community of faith. This was in the reign of Queen Mary, which lasted from 1553 to 1558. In the previous six years, under her half-brother Edward,

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churches throughout the kingdom were systematically despoiled and stripped down to what the government decided was adequate. In every case, it wasn’t much. Research into the period reveals that millions of pounds’ worth of books and manuscripts, stone altars, sculpture, stained glass, stonework, plate and statuary were destroyed, or alienated away. Within a very short space of time the entire patrimony of an age of faith, previously paid for and maintained by the parishioners themselves, was lost forever.

Immediately following the coronation of Mary in October 1553,

government policy changed. Though reunion with Rome was delayed, Catholic worship was restored by parliament. Parishes were now required to make every effort to repair or replace according to their means, and within a certain time frame, all the essential equipment for the Mass and the sacraments. Visitations of parishes were the method by which the progress, or lack of it, could be verified. Preserved for posterity is the manuscript record of what the visitors found during one such visit around Kent in September 1557.

The returns for the church, called then Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae in Marisco,

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indicate that there were then sixteen families in the parish, with no curate to serve them. The Rector lived elsewhere.

No figure for Easter communion is available and it was recommended that the parishioners should attend church at Warehorne and certify by Christmas that they were doing so until they got a curate. Several things considered necessary for the Catholic rites were still not provided. They included a sanctuary lamp; furniture for the side-altar; an altar-frontal; an extra vestment and Lenten veils and brass candlesticks. The chancel and church generally was in a state of disrepair and the parsonage barns were falling down. Deadlines for the implementation of suggested replacements and improvements vary from three to nine months. As the main requirements for Mass, such as stone altar, chalice and paten are not mentioned; the assumption must be that they had been met by the parish. Entries for a few other parishes in Kent show that some still lack stone altars, fonts and even silver chalices.

The record of the state of St Mary’s gives us a kind of snapshot of just how it appeared two years before the Elizabethan change. It also reveals in part the efforts of people to recover a way of life and a routine of worship gradually, then drastically, obliterated over a period of 20 years. But the true quality of their belief after so much change is difficult to assess. We cannot say with certainty in every case that fervour matched the response to the legislation to restore Catholicism.

Those in their teens would have been schooled strongly in the new religion and would have found it difficult to adjust to Catholic revival. The majority of the elderly would have welcomed the return to the faith of their youth. But there must have been lots of confusion and uncertainty too in general. What can be argued from the accumulation of churchwardens’ accounts, reports,

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diplomatic correspondence and diaries of that time is that the country still remained largely attached to the old religion. The optimum number of those firmly committed to the new was never more than 10 percent and in most cases much less than that, and only in a number of places where trade and commerce brought both immigrants as well as religious ideas from the continent.

It is useful at times to reflect to some extent on past experience and received wisdom or information regarding it. At one time –and it probably still happens in many places of education - the historic change from Catholicism to the established Church was taught as both popular and therefore inevitable.

The evidence suggests something much less clear cut. Drastic change is, as a rule, unwelcome to most people. The English had been second to none in their devotion to the Mass and the cult of the saints. Religious change had effectively destroyed customs and social occasion giving shape and coherence to the community. Change then was something divisive, imposed and foreign.

Something similar in execution if not in degree has occurred within our lifetime.

As a pastor charged with offering the Mass and teaching the principle doctrines of the Mass and interpreting scripture to the faithful according to the received wisdom of the Church, I often find myself deeply disturbed by the conflicting energies that have affected it in the decades of my life. Chief among them has been the liturgical revolution that removed one form of the Mass and replaced it by another. Apologists for this change advance arguments in favour of accessibility, simplicity, modernity and interactive character. But the consequent loss of a cultural coherence and continuity stretching back into antiquity seems not to disturb them at all. The ability of antique forms and rituals to define reality and convey true

meaning is an invaluable inheritance of human society. Within those forms there are degrees of success: some better than others. Pageantry and pomp appeal to the senses and convey in accessible visual terms powerful realities. Even with political change, care is taken to preserve the rituals of state because they have served well in the past. The age-old symbols and signposts of state ceremonial reveal the otherwise unseen realities of government and express continuity as well as authority.

The Mass, as the Catholic Church has always understood it, is a mystery centred around an action of God himself intervening decisively in human history.

It is essentially something done by God, in and through the mediation of the crucified humanity of His Son benefitting the whole human race. The old liturgy evolved from apostolic times absorbed the essence of this concept.

In the new it is much less evident. That is why it is such a blessing that we can have the alternative form of the Mass to re-focus our attention on the agency of divine mercy, rather than the almost ceaseless activity of the congregation.

Offering Mass today links us to the folk of the early 16th century, who in the same language and with some variations in the rite but an identical canon, united in worship of the Most Holy Trinity. As the title of St Mary in the Marsh and many others throughout the kingdom proves, Our Lady was always a primal figure of devotion in those far off days. Leading us to her Son, may she never be far from our devotion, and may her prayers aid our efforts and bring consolation and comfort to all who invoke her name.

St Augustine's, Snave is a redundant church in the care of The Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust, who kindly give permission for Mass to be celebrated there each year.

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OBITUARY

Priest to the Poor Clares Shaun Bennett remembers The Reverend Dom Antony Tumelty OSB

I

t is with great sadness that we report of the death of Dom Antony Tumelty OSB, priest to the Poor Clares in Much Birch, Herefordshire, aged just 64 years. After a three-year battle with cancer Fr Antony died on Sunday, 27 August 2017 at 3.20pm.

A staunch advocate of the Old Rite, Fr Antony offered Low Mass every Sunday evening. He was a vocal critic of the liturgical changes that came with Vatican II, opposing con-celebration and the “casual dressing down” of clerics, refusing to shun his cassock no matter where he went.

Fr Antony grew up in a very loving, humble, and close-knit family, attending St Illtyds Grammar School in Cardiff. Only a few years after leaving school, he was called to his Benedictine vocation, being professed in 1975 and ordained in 1980 at Belmont Abbey in Herefordshire, choosing St Antony of Egypt as his patron.

Many former members of Belmont Abbey School will recall Fr Antony who for many years was a Housemaster there. After the closure of the school, Fr Antony was given the post of Padre at the SAS camp in Hereford, a role he was immensely proud of, and one where he never failed to speak his mind, even to the highest ranking officers, influencing all.

Fr Antony's homilies were always a joy; sharp, critical of modernism, and always orthodox, earning them a nickname of “Rantonys”, which amused him. Never one to shy away from admonishing those in front of him, Fr Antony spoke the truth honestly and openly. Of his character, it was remarked at his requiem by a military Officer: "He was the kind of man who would opt to just 'do it', and beg forgiveness later.”

Please pray for the repose of the soul of this dearly missed priest.

Fr Antony on a visit to St John Kemble’s grave

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ROMAN REPORT

A gathering of the faithful The 6th Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage shows more than ever the universal character of the traditional Latin liturgy, says Alberto Carosa

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he Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum by Benedict XVI, with its aim to liberalize the celebration of the traditional pre-Vatican II Roman liturgy, was published on 7 July 2007, but entered into force on 14 September 2007.

So it was no coincidence that this year’s thanksgiving international pilgrimage to Rome of the faithful attached to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite took place on September 14-17, and thus coincided with the tenth anniversary of the Motu Proprio.

It was the 6th pilgrimage promoted by the Coetus Internationalis Summorum Pontificum (CISP), a group that brings together traditionalist Catholic organizations from different countries.

For the first time it received a sort of imprimatur as if it were an institutional initiative of the Church, because the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei wrote to all the superiors of its institutes and communities, male and female, inviting them to participate.

The pilgrimage programme began on Thursday, September 14, with the conference “A Renewed Youthfulness for the Whole Church” at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, or Angelicum. Among the keynote speakers was Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, who had particularly encouraging words, especially when he called upon us to cherish the liturgical value of silence as an antidote against what he called “the dictatorship of noise”, cautioning against “anthropocentric liturgies”. He also urged that we drop the use of the term ‘traditionalists’, since “you do not belong in a box on the shelf or in a museum of curiosities. You are not traditionalists: you are Catholics of the Roman rite as am I and as is the Holy Father”.

The liturgical dimension of the pilgrimage was ushered in on Thursday evening after the conference, when the Prefect of the Pontifical Household,

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Archbishop Georg Gänswein, celebrated the inaugural Solemn Vespers for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the Basilica of San Marco Evangelista al Campidoglio in Piazza Venezia. It is noteworthy that this senior prelate, as far as is known, never before publicly associated himself with the celebration of traditional liturgy.

The liturgical part, which went on the whole of Friday with the Way of

' Here were the faithful from the four corners of the world, from Japan to Georgia, from Africa to Latin America, from the US to Scandinavia' the Cross near the Colosseum and a Solemn Mass in the Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, culminated with a pontifical in St Peter’s on Saturday morning. The pontifical was preceded

by Eucharistic Adoration in Chiesa di Santa Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova), where around 2000 of the faithful from around the world went in procession to St Peter’s basilica amid prayers, hymns and standards through the streets of Rome. This was led by the Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, Archbishop Guido Pozzo, at the head of some 300 clergy.

As the celebrant of the pontifical at the Altar of the Chair, he read out the message sent by the Holy Father with his apostolic blessing. In particular, the Pope called upon the pilgrims “to persevere in prayer for the support of his Petrine ministry as successor of the apostle Peter”.

The pilgrimage gave one the chance to see the universal character of Summorum Pontificum – here were the faithful from the four corners of the world, from Japan to Georgia, from Africa to Latin America, from the US to Scandinavia.

Whereas the liturgical part of the pilgrimage ended on Sunday, September 17, with a Solemn High Mass in the Dominican Rite in the traditional parish church of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, the non-liturgical part was capped by the International Federation Una Voce (FIUV) open forum on Saturday evening, whose proceedings saw the launch of a book by one of its former presidents, Leo Darroch. In his keynote speech, he described how the FIUV’s decades-long struggle for the preservation of the Traditional Rite of the Mass, especially under the late Presidents Erich Vermehren de Saventhem and Michael Davies, ultimately led to the promulgation of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. The author recalled the prophetic words of Dr Eric de Saventhem, in June 1970 in New York, at the first General Assembly of FIUV in the United States: the Church will experience a new spring of faith spearheaded by young religious and laypeople “with ardent hearts” thanks to the “the treasure of a truly sacred liturgy”.

“This quite remarkable prophecy by Dr de Saventhem is coming true”, said Leo Darroch in his conclusion.

I realised the truth of this when, at the Palazzo Cesi, I met one of the young hermit nuns who have established a religious house in one of the most inhospitable areas of the globe, the arctic Lapland in the northernmost part of Sweden, and who have to drive no less than 400 km for the Mass and the sacraments! Needless to say, what they most urgently need is a chaplain prepared to settle there and nourish their ardent souls with “the treasure of a truly sacred liturgy”.

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

DIOCESAN DIGEST Mass of Ages quarterly round-up

ARUNDEL AND BRIGHTON Anne-Marie Mackie-Savage 01323 411370 amacsav@sky.com arundelbrightonlatinmasssociety.blogspot.co.uk Over the last few months Masses have continued to be, thankfully, regular and well attended. Pam Talbot has hosted two more days of recollection, Fr Gerard Hatton has been the celebrant, with thirty-five people attending the last one.

Fr Bruno Witchalls has continued to travel and generously provide a Mass for us in Seaford, which is greatly appreciated.

The transfer of feast days in the NO has also continued to be a blessing; it has been made possible for many of us to assist at the Latin Masses provided on the correct days. Selfishly, I hope the return of some days won't mean fewer Masses!

The Sacred Heart, Caterham, Fr Sean Finnegan's parish, now has the regular 10am Wednesday Mass available online at https://www.churchservices.tv/caterham. Take a look, and invite your family and friends who shake their heads at why you travel miles on a Sunday to take a look.

We still, unfortunately, face many of the same old problems in the Diocese, with scheduled Masses regularly being left off newsletters, the day or time being incorrect, and sudden cancellations by host parishes, which can be exceedingly frustrating. Add to this the resurgence of the back-to-the-70s climate, and it is even more important to support and pray for our priests.

If you would like Latin Masses in your area, please contact me, and we can see what can be done to help.

BIRMINGHAM (Black Country) Louis Maciel 07392 232225 louis.maciel@gmail.com birmingham-lms-rep.blogspot.co.uk There were High Masses at the Birmingham Oratory for the Feasts of the Assumption, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, All Saints and All Souls Day, as well as one for the Feast of its founder, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, on 9 October, the first time this has been celebrated in the EF. There will be a Pontifical High Mass with Bishop Robert Byrne Cong. Orat. on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in December. If memory serves, this is the third year running the patronal feast of the Oratory has been celebrated with Pontifical High Mass (last year with Archbishop Longley), so this seems to be becoming something of an annual tradition.

The Maryvale Mass in August was, as usual, celebrated in the parish church of Our Lady of the Assumption rather than the Institute chapel due to the holidays, rather aptly given it was a few days before the feast.

The monthly Mass usually on a first Friday at Solihull had to be delayed a couple of weeks in September due to the unavailability of the priest. We are hoping to have a Missa

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Cantata in December featuring a new chant group that has started in a neighbouring parish to support the able church choir.

The weekly Friday Low Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in Wolverhampton continues, with the occasional High Mass/ Missa Cantata, the last of which was in October.

Please follow the blog for announcements of future High Masses here.

BIRMINGHAM (North Staffordshire) Alan Frost 01270 768144 alan.jfrost@btinternet.com north-staffs-lms.blogspot.co.uk With the departure of Fr Dykes from Wolstanton to Lichfield, we effectively only have one priest offering the Traditional Rite Mass in North Staffs at present. Our continuing thanks to Fr Paul Chavasse of Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Swynnerton. Fr Stephen Goodman from Wolverhampton kindly stepped in, as he has in the past a number of times, to offer the EF Mass on 8 Oct. We would like to offer congratulations to Winefride Scorey, organist and singer at Swynnerton in recent years and sister of several altar servers, as she begins her studies in Medicine at Cambridge University.

BIRMINGHAM (Oxford) Joseph Shaw 01993 812874 joseph.shaw@philosophy.ox.ac.uk lmschairman.org With the moving of priests in Birmingham Archdiocese, Fr Paul Lester has moved away from Holy Trinity, Hethe. We are extremely grateful to him for establishing the Traditional Mass in this beautiful church, with a regular Sunday time of 12 noon, sung on the 2nd and 4th Sundays.

I am glad to say that, thanks to the solicitude of Archbishop Longley, this pattern will continue. Fr Anthony Talbot will be moving to Hethe to celebrate the Traditional Mass on Sundays and on other occasions as well. His arrival, however, is dependent on urgent repairs to the Presbytery, and in the meantime the Sunday Masses are being covered by a rota of priests. This situation may continue for much of this quarter, and readers should consult the local website for updates.

At the time of writing we are looking forward to our big annual event in Oxford, the Pilgrimage in honour of Oxford's Catholic martyrs, on Saturday 21 October.

Feast days in Oxford will be covered as usual by the Oratory and SS Gregory & Augustine's: please see the Mass listings.

Of particular note is the celebration of the Ember Saturday of Advent, on Saturday 23 December, just over the diocesan boundary in Holy Rood, Abingdon Road (Portsmouth Diocese).

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY BIRMINGHAM (Worcester) Margaret Parffrey 01386 750421 Mass in the Tridentine Rite continues steadily. Numbers have increased and we have seen parishioners from Worcester Parish using our Sunday Mass due to the lack of priests in Worcester parish. Numbers vary between 28 and 40.

Missa Cantata continues on 2nd and 4th Sundays. Sung by Scola Gregoriana Malverniensis under Alistair Tocher.

We also have sad news of the departure of Fr Anthony Talbot. Tridentine Mass is homeless, please pray for Fr Anthony and our Mass centre. We are homeless from Christmas. We are eternally grateful for his spiritual guidance and continual care of our souls; this he carried out with liturgical efficiency. We wish him well in his future priestly life.

Our new priest Fr Cornelias at Redditch is making steady progress in the Tridentine Rite assisted by Louis and Steve.

Please pray he will continue when he returns to Ghana in December. Thank you Fr for all the graces you bring us. Father Lamb at Kidderminster continues with 1st Sunday of each month at 3pm served faithfully by John Neale. Fr Christopher says Mass Tuesday at 7pm in Evesham. We commend all our Mass centres to Our Lady of Fatima and place all our priests under his protection.

BRENTWOOD Mark Johnson 020 8555 1795 mark.johnson592@gmail.com Many members will be aware that Fr Stewart Foster celebrated his Silver Jubilee of Ordination to the Sacred Priesthood with High Mass on Sunday, 17 September at St Margaret's Covent Chapel. Canon William Young assisted as the Deacon whilst Gary Dench, a seminarian for the Diocese of Brentwood, was the Subdeacon. A congregation of over 100 assisted at the Mass and exquisite music was provided by Cantores Missae, under the direction of Charles Finch. There was a reception afterwards in the convent next door. It was a wonderful occasion and my thanks go to all those that worked so hard. Fr Foster has been a consistent and hard-working supporter of the Traditional Mass in Brentwood and our thanks and congratulations go to him and all those priests of the diocese that work so selflessly for us.

I would remind members that the annual Sung Requiem Mass will take place at St Patrick's Cemetery Chapel at 10am on Saturday, 25 November. Please do all you can to attend and advertise the Mass. The Mass is offered for the repose of the souls of all those at rest in the cemetery.

I would also point out that the Mass on Sunday, 24 December at St Margaret's will be at 2.30pm in the afternoon.

There will be NO Mass in the evening on that day or on Christmas Day.

CARDIFF Andrew Butcher 07905 609770 andrew.butcher@lmscardiff.org.uk lmscardiff.org.uk I must apologise for missing the last two editions of the Mass of Ages. This is due to my current work schedule. The

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last quarter has seen a few changes in the Archdiocese. The weekly 6.30pm Mass at Much Birch has now moved to Belmont Abbey, at an earlier time of 4pm. On 27 August we received the sad news of Fr Antony's death. Father has suffered for many years but continued to be a great advocate of the Traditional Mass and a friend who will be greatly missed. A homily given by him can be found on the LMS Cardiff website and his obituary is on page 14 of this edition of Mass of Ages.

Requiescant in Pace.

Please continue to pray for our priests and vocations and continue to support the Masses where possible.

CLIFTON James Belt & Monika Paplaczyk 07890 687453 lmsclifton@gmail.com lmsclifton.blogspot.co.uk Our annual Glastonbury Pilgrimage was held on Saturday, 9 September, in the Shrine Church of Our Lady, St Mary of Glastonbury. Sung Mass for the External Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lady was celebrated by Fr Philip Thomas, Parish Priest in Wells. The Rupert Bevan Singers provided the music, which included Victoria’s Missa Vidi Speciosam. After Mass, Fr George Roth, of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, gave a talk in the parish hall, and then led us in the Rosary, and Benediction back in the Shrine Church. We would like to thank everyone involved in the organisation of the pilgrimage, especially Kim Woolmer, the Shrine Administrator, for her invaluable help before the Pilgrimage and on the day.

A good contingent of Clifton pilgrims attended the annual LMS walking pilgrimage to Walsingham in August.

The regular monthly Mass at Downside Abbey in August was a Sung Mass. Attendance was very good, with the crypt chapel full. It is hoped that more sung Sunday Masses will take place in the future.

Other regular Masses continue around the Diocese.

We are very pleased that Fr Bede Rowe has now started another weekly Sunday Mass, in his new parish of St Mary’s, Glastonbury.

EAST ANGLIA (West) Gregor and Alisa Dick 01223 322401 igregord@gmail.com alisarkd@gmail.com Mass at Blackfriars in Cambridge is continuing as usual.

We have a large number of families with young children who attend, and we recently had a Dominican Missa Cantata on the first Sunday of October. The addition of a couple of new servers has been a great help to us, and it is hoped now that the Sung Masses will be become more frequent. Further servers and choir members are always welcome.

We have just recently been informed, however, that the chaplain at Fisher House can no longer offer the Old Rite Mass on Saturdays during term time because of an overburdened schedule. We and others from Fisher House are trying to work towards a solution, and would be grateful if any interested parties could please get in touch with us as soon as possible.

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© Kevin Jones

REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

The opening Mass of the new Shrine of the English Martyrs in Preston on Sunday, 24 September LANCASTER Bob & Jane Latin 01524 412987 lancasterlms@gmail.com latinmasslancaster.blogspot.com John Rogan 01524 858832 john_rogan@yahoo.co.uk The highlight of this quarter was undoubtedly the opening of the new Shrine to the English Martyrs at the church of St Thomas of Canterbury & the English Martyrs in Preston on Sunday, 24 September, which will now be administered by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. Bishop Michael Campbell OSA offered a Pontifical High Mass and Mgr Gilles Wach, Prior General of the Institute, was in choir.

The church was packed and the music was glorious. It was a great pleasure and privilege to be present.

The Canons have now arranged their schedule so that EF Masses are said at both St Walburge and English Martyrs through the week; see Mass Listing for details. Please ignore the information given in the Autumn Mass of Ages as this is incorrect.

Following the Institute's chapter meeting in the summer there has been a change of clergy at St Walburge. Canon Poucin has now moved to the Wirral and Canon Tanner has moved from there to St Walburge. Also this summer, the Feast of the Assumption saw the traditional procession head not only around the church but also out into the surrounding streets where residents stood outside their houses to watch it go by.

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We were fortunate to have four Masses at Sizergh Castle this year including, at very short notice, one offered by newly-ordained Fr Daniel Etienne. Our apologies to anyone who either didn't hear about it or was unable to come. Fr Etienne is currently based at St John Vianney & St Monica in Blackpool and is in charge of the Mass rota; this allows him to slip in some EF Masses from time to time, although at present these have to be on an ad hoc basis and are not publicised very far in advance. Fr Etienne also offered his First High Mass at St Walburge on Saturday, 7 October.

LIVERPOOL Jim Pennington 0151 426 0361 pennington893@btinternet.com Regular Sunday and Holyday EF Masses continue in the parishes of St Catherine Laboure, Farington, offered by the Parish Priest, Fr Simon Henry, and St Mary Magdalen, Penwortham, offered by priests of the Institute of Christ the King based at St Walburge, Preston. And of course, the priests of the Fraternity of St Peter are now well established at St Mary’s, Warrington, and the full programme of Mass and the Sacraments according to the old rite continues.

In September, two of our regular EF celebrants were moved to new parishes – Fr Sean Riley from Holy Cross and St Helen to Christ the King and Our Lady, Childwall, and Fr Ian O’Shea from St Joseph, Anderton to a Wigan parish. Consequently, the occasional EF Masses at Holy Cross, and the Saturday Mass at St Joseph’s will not continue. Unfortunately, the Sunday Mass

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY schedule in Fr O’Shea’s new parish does not permit him to continue offering our Sunday Mass at St Anthony’s.

However, Fr Riley now finds himself able to join the Mass rota at St Anthony’s, and is joined by Fr Matthew Jolley of St Bede’s, Widnes, and Fr Leo Daley of St John the Evangelist, Burscough.

Fr John Harris also continues at St Anthony’s, so these Masses continue, offered in turn by diocesan priests and Canons of the Institute of Christ the King at New Brighton.

On Christmas Day last year, we were able to have Mass at St Anthony’s, thanks to the kind offices of Fr John Hemer of Allen Hall, paying a visit to his home city. Fr Hemer will be in Liverpool again this year, so our Christmas Day Mass at St Anthony’s is assured.

We should be most thankful to these busy priests for their continuing dedication to the Mass which we all love, sometimes in the face of less support than one would wish.

I heard this week of the recent death of Fr Michael Gaine, who, for ten years from 1990 to 2000, offered Sunday and Holyday EF Mass at St Mary’s, Highfield Street, Liverpool, having been appointed to do so by Archbishop Warlock. Fr Gaine was always willing and generous, and we have much reason to be grateful to him for making a regular Sunday Mass possible in times when the provision of EF Masses was much rarer than we now enjoy in Liverpool and the neighbouring Dioceses. Please remember his soul in your prayers.

LIVERPOOL (Warrington) Alan Frost 01270 768144 alan.jfrost@btinternet.com In only a short period of time, St Mary’s Shrine Church in Warrington has established itself as an important centre for the celebration and promotion of the Traditional Rite Latin Mass. It is served by the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, by appointment of the RC Archdiocese of Liverpool. The Rector is Fr de Malleray and the Assistant is Fr Mawdsley (since July 2016).

Masses are offered every day, as is the opportunity for Confession before Mass. On Sunday, a Sung Mass is celebrated with a very good choir indeed. The range of works accompanying the Mass throughout the year is wide and impressive, and advertised in the weekly bulletin (also on-line).

There are also a number of programmes offered for the promotion of the Catholic Faith and the Latin tradition, including weekly courses in learning Latin and linking it to the Sunday readings at Mass. Young people (18-35) can attend classes for the understanding and proper practice of the Catholic Faith, while young men are invited to attend talks on vocations to the Priesthood. Priests and members of the congregation regularly support Pro-Life events in Warrington. In June there was a procession of the Blessed Sacrament right through the middle of the town.

This followed the previous day’s historic Ordinations in the Traditional Rite of two priests of the FSSP. They were ordained

by Archbishop Malcolm McMahon OP, the first such Traditional Rite ordinations in this country for over 50 years. The church was packed even though it is of near Cathedral size, and as a consequence requires significant funding and voluntary help for its daily maintenance. Support is invited, particularly through the FSSP quarterly magazine Dowry (free) which Fr de Malleray edits.

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MIDDLESBROUGH Paul Waddington 01757 638027 paul@gooleboathouse.co.uk latinmassmiddlesbrough.blogspot.co.uk There will be a Solemn Mass to mark the feast of St Charles Borromeo at 12.10pm on Saturday, 4 November in the church of St Charles Borromeo in Hull. This Mass has been arranged to give a Catholic dimension to Hull’s City of Culture celebrations. The celebrant will be Fr Mark Drew and music will be provide by the Rudgate Singers.

Fr Drew has recently moved from Hornsea to Hedon and intends to start celebrating Sunday Masses at the church of St Mary and St Joseph in Hedon. These will be at 5pm on the second Sunday of each month, beginning on 14th January.

Hedon is about four miles to the east of Hull, and it’s an attractive little church that dates from 1803, some 27 years before the Catholic Emancipation Act. Attendance at the midday Sunday Masses offered by the Oratorians in York continues to increase gradually, but the numbers at the Wednesday evening Masses in Hull have been a little disappointing recently.

I am very conscious of the lack of any provision of Latin Masses in the northern part of the diocese, since the ending of Sunday Masses in Redcar. It is difficult for me to be active in that part of the diocese, due to the amount of travelling that would be involved, and because the activities in York, Hull and Hedon keep me fully occupied. Some assistance looking after LMS affairs in the Middlesbrough area would be greatly appreciated. Please do not be shy of volunteering.

NORTHAMPTON (South) Barbara Kay 01234 340759 mbky3@outlook.com Nick Ross 07951 145240 nick@efmass.co.uk Great news at Bedford – after two years of weekly Sunday Latin Masses, with the agreement of Bishop Peter Doyle and Parish Priest Fr Patrick Hutton, the FSSP has agreed to send a priest to Bedford every Sunday and on Holydays of Obligation to say Mass from 8 October. Priests from the FSSP have visited us from time to time and the continuity they will bring is a great joy. It will also mean that our current faithful rota of visiting priests will have less travelling to do on a Sunday. It goes without saying that we will miss them and are deeply grateful for their help over the past two years. Thank you Frs Aldritt, Crean, Diaz, Horgan and Jonak, and plenty of others who have helped out on an occasional basis to keep the Mass going.

None of this would have been possible without the openness and hospitality of Fr Patrick and his wife Rita.

Their wisdom and experience have made the integration of a Latin Mass into the thriving Bedford parish much easier than it might have been, and they, along with the parishioners attending the English Mass, have made us feel welcome at every moment of our time in Bedford. We look forward to entering this new chapter with them.

We are pleased to report that we were able to have weekly Sunday Mass without a break over the summer, thanks to

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY our regular celebrants and some others who stood in. The summer period also included the Feast of the Assumption, celebrated by Fr Gabriel Diaz, and the Birthday of Our Lady, celebrated by Fr Anton Webb.

Although we number 50 or more on most Sundays, numbers were unsurprisingly slightly down over the summer as people took their holidays. However, Sunday Masses are now reaching their usual numbers again. Our Men’s Group and Women’s Group, which have started since the Latin Mass came to Bedford, are flourishing, and a Legion of Mary Praesidium has just started in the parish.

Further afield, Deacon Peter Hyde from St Francis of Assisi, Shefford reports “The Latin Mass at Shefford is still being celebrated on the 3rd Friday of the month at 7.30 pm. The numbers attending are very low. On a number of occasions there have only been one or two people at Mass. At this time of writing no decision has been made to close this Mass, but it's a decision that will be made if numbers remain low.” He has asked me to mention this in the hope that numbers will pick up and it will be worthwhile continuing.

Looking ahead to 2018, we are pleased to announce that one of our congregation, Chris Norfolk, who has set up the Legion of Mary at Bedford, became engaged to Lucy Crabtree recently. They are planning their wedding in the Latin Rite at Christ the King next February, the first such wedding for very many years. Congratulations and every blessing to them both.

NORTHAMPTON (Northamptonshire) Paul Beardsmore 01858 434037 pbeardsmore@btinternet.com The regular Saturday morning Masses continue at St Brendan's in Corby. Fr Byrne also offered Mass on the feast of the Assumption, and a triduum of Masses during the Forty Hours devotion in September.

NOTTINGHAM (Lincolnshire) Mike Carroll lmslincolnshire.blogspot.com Facebook: Latin Mass in Catholic Lincolnshire The Latin Mass at Ashby Scunthorpe has now finished.

Our priest is on sabbatical for six months, but we have been informed that the Latin Mass will return. We will give you the details in due course.

It is possible for Lincolnshire attendees to go to Latin Masses in Doncaster (third Sundays), York (every Sunday), Hull (first Wednesdays). We have also been informed that there will be a Latin Mass starting shortly in Heddon just across the river which will be once a month. So options are available relatively locally.

NOTTINGHAM (Leicestershire and Rutland) Paul Beardsmore 01858 434037 pbeardsmore@btinternet.com The daily Mass at Holy Cross Priory in Leicester is now back on a more even keel; our thanks to the Prior for keeping this going whenever he could over the last six months, and

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to Fr Matthew Jarvis who is now providing him with much needed support. Sunday Masses continue as usual, as do the Saturday and first Friday Masses at St Peter's in Leicester and the regular Friday Masses in Oakham. Sung Mass was celebrated for the feast of the Assumption at Holy Cross Priory, and also on the patronal feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (also, of course, the tenth anniversary of the implementation of Summorum Pontificum).

NOTTINGHAM Jeremy Boot 07462 018386 jeremy.boot2@gmail.com Our Masses in the Nottingham area are continuing apace at The Good Shepherd, Nottingham (Sat before the 2nd Sunday, 4.45pm); Our Lady and St Patrick, the Meadows, Nottingham 2pm (3rd and 4th Sundays). Some Masses are sung, usually the 3rd Sunday’s Mass at Our Lady and St Patrick. There is also a Low Mass monthly at the Cathedral at 6.15pm on the 3rd Wednesday. We hope that with a change of Administrator at the Cathedral, this will not be changed, particularly since the Mass is staffed from our own resources.

Attendances are stable and even improving. It is a joy to see many Polish families at the Our Lady and St Patrick’s Masses and of course they are very welcome. Attendance at the Good Shepherd Masses are also improving at last.

Occasionally, there are moans about venues and times of Masses, but it needs to be understood that we have these Masses because of the generosity of our priests and those with parishes are adding to their own burden. Where we are a guest of a parish, we do not always feel welcome – this applies as much here as elsewhere – but we cannot pick and choose where our Masses are. It is self-delusion to suppose we can.

The EF form of the Roman Rite is not treated as equal with the OF and rarely do any resources come our way: notably servers, where we rely on our own faithful and selfless volunteers.

Our thanks to them as well as to singers and organists, but principally to our priests without whom there would be no Masses at all.

PORTSMOUTH (Bournemouth) Tim Fawkes Tel: 01202 730200 t.fawkes136@btinternet.com The establishment of the Bournemouth Oratory in Formation took place in May of this year and the arrival of Fr Dominic Jacob means that we have a priest based in the town who is willing to offer Mass in the Extraordinary Form. The area has waited a long time for this and we are grateful.

Low Mass is being offered regularly on the last Monday of each month in the evening, although the timing of this will change to the first Friday of the month at the earlier time of 6pm from December. Additionally, Masses were offered for the Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 14 August and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 8 September.

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY The feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, on 14 September, was of course the 10th anniversary of the provisions of Summorum Pontificum taking effect and to participate in the offering of a further Low Mass was a fitting way to mark this day and give thanks.

Please refer to the parish newsletter which is viewable at www.bournemouthoratory.org.uk for details of forthcoming masses.

PORTSMOUTH (Isle of Wight) Peter Clarke 01983 566740 07790 892592 pclarke.wight@tiscali.co.uk The final Sunday Mass offered by Fr Anthony Glaysher at St Mary’s, Ryde was 3 September. About 60 people were present.

Father is now at Aldershot. The Island LMS community wish to thank him for all that he has done here to promote the EF Mass.

We were delighted to welcome Fr Martin Edwards back to Ryde for a Missa Cantata on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, followed by veneration of a Relic of the True Cross.

In his sermon Father reminded us that: “We should give thanks today on this 10th anniversary for the results of Summorum Pontificum. It freed us from the constraints and restrictions that were imposed on the celebration of the EF Mass and it placed an obligation upon bishops to provide this form of the Roman Rite where it was requested. It also emphasised that this Mass was never abrogated.

“Let us also, especially on this day, thank God for the graces that have flowed from Summorum Pontificum. Let us thank him for the ministry of Fr Glaysher here in Ryde for the past nine years.

“Let us thank him for this parish - our parish - the first in England to have three forms of the Mass (Ordinary, Extraordinary and Ordinariate) celebrated. Let us also thank Him for the steady flow of priests who have come forward to learn the EF Mass and provide spiritual nourishment for the laity.”

Fr Edwards returned a week later on the Feast of St Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist. On that occasion he invited us both to read and to listen to the word of God as related by the four evangelists, so that we will be inspired to a greater awareness of the gospel message.

With Fr Glaysher’s departure, the Fraternity of St Peter came to our assistance and offered us a Day of Recollection on 17 October at St Mary’s, Ryde on the theme: “Our Lady, Fatima and the Rosary”, which was led by Fr Matthew Goddard FSSP, thus marking the centenary of the final apparition of Our Lady.

As mentioned in the last Mass of Ages, we are most grateful to Fr Jonathan Revers Harris of the Ordinariate, who is also parish priest at Cowes / East Cowes. Father is learning the EF Mass, which he has agreed to offer on a monthly basis initially. This allows for the EF Mass to continue here on the Island, although greatly reduced.

We would be pleased to hear from any priest who wishes to visit our beautiful Island to offer the Mass for us.

Accommodation and expenses will be covered.

For those coming from the mainland please telephone me first to confirm Masses: 01983 566740 or 07790 892592.

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Fr Harry Heijveld at Sacred Heart reading the Gospel at Sacred Heart, South Street, Exeter PLYMOUTH (Devon) Maurice Quinn 07555 536579 mq018q1057@blueyonder.co.uk I am happy to report that numbers attending the Old Rite Mass in the county have been pleasing throughout the summer months. At the regular Sunday morning 11.30am Sung Mass at St Edward the Confessor, Plymouth, the congregation varies between 25 – 50 people, attracting families from around the city and other areas. The young boys in training on the altar – Samuel (9), Alejandro (8), and Oliver (7) - are serving with reverence and dignity, and quite clearly love doing so. It is also pleasing to see that new vestments are making an appearance at St Edward’s, so that very soon all feasts and seasons will be catered for. Since starting this regular Sunday Missa Cantata last January, Fr Tony Pillari and many of the regulars have worked hard in making it the success that it quite clearly is.

Well done everyone!

At St Mary’s Abbey, Buckfastleigh, the regular monthly Wednesday morning Mass has remained popular with everybody and still attracts visitors. Fr Guy de Gaynesford, who has been regularly celebrating this Mass all year, now alternately shares the responsibility with Fr Tom Reagan OSB., who has re-joined us after his stint looking after a parish in Dorset. Please note that on 15 November Fr Tom will be celebrating a Sung Requiem here at Buckfast, so do please check the Mass Listings if you wish to attend (there is also a notice of Vetus Ordo celebrations in the porch of the abbey).

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY Our regular monthly Vetus Ordo Mass at St Cyprian’s, Ugbrooke House, celebrated by Fr Guy de Gaynesford, has been attracting about 25 people on average, some of whom stayed for tea afterwards in the orangery, which has been open for the summer. With some of our regulars away on holiday at various times, the summer visitors have helped to boost the numbers attending; it was a special joy to see families on holiday with children in the congregation.

Unfortunately, though, holidays naturally led to a depletion in the serving team and the choir, and as a result at least one celebration had to be changed from a Sung to a Low Mass.

The good news is that from now on we are back to normal at this very special and historic Mass venue. If you intend travelling to St Cyprian’s for one of our Old Rite celebrations do take note that there will not be one in December, although the other months will not be affected. As always, do check the Mass Listings or contact me by phone or email for more information.

As elsewhere, the numbers attending the Traditional Latin Mass at Blessed Sacrament in Exeter has been in the 25-30 range, again attracting holiday visitors and students alike. We have to thank Fr Harry Heijveld and Mgr Adrian Toffolo for celebrating Mass for us at this venue over the summer months. One big change that happens every year at Blessed Sacrament that you need to take note of is that the Traditional Rite Mass in December will be brought forward from the third Sunday to the second Sunday. This is because the annual parish Carol Service is always held on the third Sunday of December, being an important and well attended event for the parish.

In Devon, due to the hard work of many priests and people, the Traditional Rite Latin Mass is gaining in popularity to the extent that we are looking for other venues for our celebrations. This can only benefit the wider church, but it does mean that we need more men/boys charitable enough to offer themselves for training as altar servers, especially (but not exclusively) in the Exeter area. If you would like to train as an altar server contact me after Mass or by phone or email for more details.

PLYMOUTH (Dorset) Maurice Quinn 07555 536579 Mq018q1057@blueyonder.co.uk Once again it was a great pleasure for me to attend the Extraordinary Form Latin Mass on Thursday, 10 August (St Lawrence) at Our Lady’s, in the delightful village of Marnhull.

The Mass, celebrated by Fr Martin Budge, was reasonably well attended, and the little gathering in the church rooms for lunch afterwards gave everyone present a chance to socialise.

Unfortunately, I was unable to be present at Marnhull for Fr Martin’s October Latin Mass due to other commitments, but I hope to be present at future celebrations (the photo shows Fr Martin during the Agnus Dei at Our Lady’s on Corpus Christi). At the present time, since the recent departure of Fr Tom Reagan OSB from Blandford Forum, Fr Martin’s twomonthly celebration of the Vetus Ordo is the only one in Dorset. However, Fr Tom’s replacement at Blandford Forum – Mgr Francis Jamieson – is fully conversant with Mass in the Extraordinary Form, having celebrated it at Spanish Place, London, from whence he came. It may be possible

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Fr Martin at the Agnus Dei on Corpus Christi at Our Lady’s, Marnhull to celebrate the EF Mass at Blandford at some point in the future, and if this is the case please do give your wholesale support. There may be other priests in Dorset interested in learning to celebrate this beautiful, dignified and reverent pre-Vatican II Mass. If this is the case, please do not hesitate in contacting me for more information and LMS support.

SHREWSBURY (Chester) Andrew Nielsen Andrew Nielsen 01352 713633 Last March the long running third Sunday monthly Mass at St Thomas Becket, Tarporley, Cheshire was discontinued due to Fr Joseph Carney, the Parish Priest, not being in the best of health. Since then third Sunday monthly Masses are being said at St Clare's in Lache on the outskirts of Chester.

The Institute of Christ the King have kindly agreed to celebrate the Masses on an on-going basis, ending problems in finding priests to regularly say Mass. Congregation numbers are not large, but starting in October, the parish choir, complete with ex-Brompton Oratory organist, will be singing at the Traditional Latin Mass. With this in mind, future Masses will be Missa Cantata instead of Low Mass.

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY SOUTHWARK (St Bede’s Clapham Park) Thomas Windsor 020 8654 9352 thomaswindsor@mac.com The summer is usually a quiet time but here at St Bede’s our Sunday Sung Masses continue in July and August. We also had an extra weekday Sung Mass for the Feast of the Assumption.

I would like to Thank Fr Southwell for spending the summer with us celebrating our daily Mass while our usual priests have been on a much deserved Holiday.

Fr Michael Rowe has also been visiting us celebrating Sung Masses for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Michaelmass, and St Bruno. We also have had the Abbot of Clear Creek visiting, and he celebrated a Pontifical High Mass on the Feast of St Wenceslaus.

On Sunday 24th we had a High Mass, and shared much to say goodbye to Fr Pawel, one of our Polish visiting priests. We are grateful to him for learning to say the Traditional Mass while he has been with us. He has now moved down to help the Polish community in Maidstone, and hopefully will be able to help out with Traditional Masses in that area. Another Polish Priest, Fr Gregory Klaja, made a return visit to us having learned to say the Traditional Mass at St Bede’s a few years ago.

This gave us the opportunity to have another High Mass. Once again we would like to thank Fr Rowe in doing so much of the organising for two High Masses and the Pontifical High Mass; he returned to Perth on the 11 October.

SOUTHWARK (Kent) Marygold Turner 01580 291372 Our main event recently has been the Missa Cantata at the pre-Reformation church at Snave on the Marsh. Mgr Conlon celebrated and gave a most erudite and interesting sermon, he is a very fine historian. The augmented Victoria Consort sang Luis de Victoria, which was a joy, especially as the church has good acoustics. This was our third annual Mass at Snave, and the Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust have invited us to come again next year, which we will do with pleasure. We had drinks and sandwiches after the Mass, which was very well attended by over 70 people.

All our Masses are continuing, including the Immaculate Conception and the Epiphany. Fr Neil Brett very kindly said Mass for us on the Assumption of Our Lady - we much appreciate his annual visit!

On a less positive note, Fr Michael Woodgate feels (rightly) that he cannot say Mass on Christmas Day, as before, with all his many commitments, but there will be Mass at Headcorn (12 noon) on Christmas Eve.

SOUTHWARK (Thanet) Antonia Robinson The Traditional Latin Mass continues to thrive in Thanet with strong and growing congregations in both Margate and Ramsgate. Margate has seen the addition of several families over the summer, including one who had visited and having liked the parish and the Traditional Mass so much they decided to move to the area!

The scholas in both parishes continue to increase their repertoire, and both parishes are encouraging a community to

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grow with tea and coffee after the Sunday Mass. The feast of St Philomena (11 August) was celebrated at St Austin and St Gregory, Margate with music provided by Cantabo Domino.

Pugin Week (7-14 September) in Ramsgate was very successful with a full calendar of talks, concerts, exhibitions and liturgical events, including a Requiem Mass for Pugin and his family in the Pugin Chantry Chapel above his tomb at St Augustine’s. The new sanctuary arrangement at St Augustine’s has been received enthusiastically by both visitors and parishioners alike, and by the time this is published, the new reliquary for the shrine will have been blessed by Cardinal Burke on a visit specially for the occasion on 14 October. For more on St Augustine’s see pages 42-45.

SOUTHWARK (Wandsworth) Julia Ashenden julia.ashenden@gmail.com The Mass of Ages continues to be celebrated by Fr Martin Edwards at St Mary Magdalen's Church at 11am every Sunday (unless he is away).

Indeed, it has been ever thus since Fr Martin's arrival in the parish in 1997, so this year, on 3 September, we celebrated twenty years of Usus Antiquor.

The Sunday Mass is a Low Mass but once a month we have a Missa Cantata with a professional choir who have sung Masses

by Mozart, Haydn and Rheinberger as well as Gregorian Chant.

There are now drinks served after this Mass and all visitors are most welcome.

Our Patronal Festival on 22 July was joyfully celebrated with Mozart's Coronation Mass, sung by David Guest's choir. It was well-attended, as was the barbecue which followed.

Fr Martin's MC, Matthew McInally, who has served at the 11am Mass since he was very young, has just gone to Durham University this term and we shall all miss his quiet and beautiful way of serving Mass – Fr Martin most of all.

WESTMINSTER (Spanish Place) Roger Wemyss Brooks Finding priests to say our Old Rite Holy Mass each Sunday is often a difficult task. Many priests who are able to say this Rite have parochial commitments elsewhere.

Our regular Old Rite Chaplain, Fr Michael Cullinan, has important duties teaching and examining students of Maryvale Institute International Catholic College in Birmingham Diocese and there are occasions when he is not available for us. Mgr Francis Jamieson who lived in the Rectory here has now moved to Plymouth Diocese and Fr David Irwin, still very much with us, has not been enjoying good health.

Recent Masses have been supplied by Fr John Hemer from Allen Hall seminary, Fr Gabriel Diaz-Patri of Argentina, Fr Gerard Hatton from Eastbourne, Fr Mark Elliott-Smith of the Ordinariate at Warwick Street, Fr Michael Rowe from Perth, Western Australia, Fr Gregory Morgan also from Australia, in Sydney and not forgetting dear Fr Patrick Hayward, a longserving friend here and elsewhere in the Archdiocese.

We should pray in thanksgiving for these holy men from far and wide who bring us this precious Rite. I pay tribute to their readiness to help us, often at considerable personal cost and for their care in offering the immemorial Mass of Ages. Please also contribute generously to the 9.30am Mass collection which helps the parish with necessary expenses.

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ART AND DEVOTION

“Be Welcome, my God, Caroline Shaw on The Nativity by Piero della Francesca (c.1470-75) in the National Gallery, London

I

n this beautiful image - which is quite possibly the last work painted

by Piero della Francesca - we see Our Lady kneeling before her newborn baby, Who is the Son of God. He lies naked, vulnerable and pale on his mother’s outstretched mantle, His arms reaching up towards her for comfort.

Our Lady gazes at her Son, her eyes downcast and her hands together in prayer. Her expression of humble and profound contemplation, together with her stillness and interior prayerfulness, powerfully indicate to us the enormity of the event.

Behind the Christ child stand five wingless angels. Two of the angels sing praises, their mouths agape and eyes raised Heavenward, while another two accompany the singers on the lute. The central angel meanwhile, stays silent, joining Our Lady in prayerful adoration of the Son of God. Although one can imagine how beautiful the Heavenly music must have been, somehow in the limpid stillness of the scene, no sound seems to break the silence. To the right is St Joseph, dressed in black and pink and seated on a saddle. He turns to listen to the account of two shepherds, as they recount the extraordinary events they have just witnessed. The shepherd on the left points upwards as he describes the multitude of angels that thronged the night sky above.

The scene is set on a raised rocky outcrop above a landscape which, on the left, closely resembles the valley of the river Arno. On the right there is a townscape of spires and towers that could very well be Borgo Sansepolcro.

The artist has replaced the landscape of the Holy Land with the pale hills and dark trees of the Tuscan countryside, while his own home town represents Bethlehem. The monumental event of the birth of the Son of God has thus been brought to fifteenth-century

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Tuscany. The ruined structure behind the figures, with its sloping roof and broken walls, symbolizes the collapse of the classical temple and the end of the pagan religion at the moment of the Nativity. A new era has begun: the era of Our Lord. The ox and ass who shelter under the roof are often associated with the pagans (the ass) and the Jews (the ox), who will both bow down before the Messiah. On the roof of the structure sits a magpie, a bird most commonly associated with man’s fallen nature, combining as it does, intelligence with a sly and thieving character. In contrast to the braying ass, the magpie is silent, his normal chatter has died away and he stands as a mute witness to the scene before him. In the foliage to the left of the feet of the angel in white, perch three goldfinches. These small birds are traditionally associated with Christ’s Passion and particularly His crown of thorns, since they feed on thistle seeds and prickly shrubs. The goldfinches represent the foreknowledge Our Lady and Jesus Himself had of His Passion and Crucifixion.

The limpid, ethereal light bathes the whole scene in an atmosphere of silent contemplation. The composition and colours the artist has used lend the painting a deeply lyrical quality. The beautifully graded blues of the angels’ robes, together with the greyish-blue of the sky and the rocky landscape, create a cool, still air. The angels lead our eye from the left hand side towards the centre of the painting, where our eye rests upon Our Lady with her luminously pale skin and rich dark blue robe. To the right, the colours become more earthy, warm and rustic – the skin tone of the shepherds, and indeed of St Joseph, is darker, and the brown, pink, black and russet red of their clothes create a more earth-bound and human feel. Our Lady, in the centre of

the painting, acts as a link between the angels and the shepherds, just as she is a bridge between the Heavenly realm and the earthly world that we inhabit.

This scene is far more silent and introspective than most Nativity scenes.

The ox and ass, the shepherds and the stable are all present, but it lacks the joyful throng and the tender sweetness of many such images. Indeed, although the title of the painting is the ‘Nativity’, the scene that Piero has painted should more accurately be described as the ‘Adoration of the Christ Child’, since it draws upon the vision of the birth of Our Lord which St Bridget of Sweden received during a visit to Bethlehem in March 1372. Her account, which was well known and very popular in the 15th century, describes the birth of Our Lord, in the presence of St Joseph and the ox and the ass, in a most vivid and beautiful way: “Verily, all of a sudden, I saw the glorious infant lying on the ground naked and shining. His body was pure from any kind of soil and impurity. Then I heard also the singing of the angels, which was of miraculous sweetness and great beauty… When therefore the virgin felt that she had borne her child, she immediately worshipped Him, her head bent down and her hands clasped, with great honour and reverence, and said unto Him, ‘Be welcome my God, my Lord and my Son’. When this was done, the old man entered, and prostrating himself to the floor, he wept for joy.”

Many other Renaissance artists, including Botticelli and Fra Filippo Lippi, also portrayed the Adoration of the Christ Child according to the description of St Bridget. However, in this quiet, still, enigmatic scene, Piero comes perhaps closest of all to conveying the intensity and gravity, and indeed the great unfathomable mystery, of the Incarnation itself.

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ART AND DEVOTION

my Lord and my Son”

No sound seems to break the silence

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COMMENT

The Smile of Heaven Mary O’Regan on the significance of the number 13 Some basic observations about Our Lady and the Number 13 include: Our Lady was the 13th person in the room when the Holy Spirit descended on her and the Apostles. Our Lady gave St Dominic the Rosary in the 13th century and Our Lady appeared on the 13th of the month at Fatima. During the Fatima centenary many of us have reiterated that 13 is close to Our Lady's heart, yet I am unaware of any authoritative explanations from the Church as to why.

A

fter I wrote a piece for The Catholic Herald examining Our Lady's strong connection to the number 13, a lapsed Irish Catholic got in touch to tell me I was a neurotic owing to my "obsession" with the number 13. She taunted me that I was only pretending to be a "real" Irishwoman but was too pious at too young an age to be a product of modern Ireland and was therefore a fake.

I chuckled at this because it is owing to my upbringing in Ireland, where I was toughened up by anti-Catholic antagonists, that her onslaught ran like water off me.

However, I am not the first person in history to note the presence of meaningful numbers in and around our Holy Religion. According to the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia, the Church Fathers considered the possible spiritual meaning of numbers in Scripture: Suffice it to note here that although the Fathers repeatedly condemned the magical use of numbers which had descended from Babylonian sources to the Pythagoreans and Gnostics of their times, and although they denounced any system of their philosophy which rested upon an exclusively numerical basis, still they almost unanimously regarded the numbers of Holy Writ as full of mystical meaning.

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The number 13 may also represent the Blessed Trinity itself: there is one God of Three Blessed Persons.

Mary of Jesus of Ágreda, who has been declared "Venerable" but not canonized, wrote in her much pondered Mystical City of God, that the Assumption of Our Lady occurred at 3pm on an August 13.

Any pondering of the significance of the number 13 has to be done in a spirit of holy docility. In a deferential spirit I would like to offer my thesis that the number 13 is a succinct numerical definition of Our Lady's relationship with the Blessed Trinity, the 1 stands for Our Lady and the 3 stands for each Person of the Trinity.

The number 13 may also represent the Blessed Trinity itself: there is one God of Three Blessed Persons. If you look at 13 forwards you may define it to mean one God Who is made up of three Divine Persons, if you look at it from right to left, you have the definition of three Persons in one God. In the Post Communion Proper for the Tridentine

Mass of Trinity Sunday we pray to be “made strong... by acknowledging the Holy, Eternal Trinity and its undivided Unity”.

I believe 13 may be a numerical portrait of Our Lady's relationship with each Blessed Person of the Trinity, in that the Three Persons are distinct from each other. In accordance to the distinct nature of each, Our Lady has a distinct status with each Person; Our Lady is Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son and Spouse of the Holy Spirit.

It may be the number 13 has a double function: 13 may represent the Blessed Trinity and simultaneously represent Our Lady's role with each Divine Person of the Trinity.

If my thesis thus far has any validity, I do not believe I came to it alone. One day I asked Our Lady in prayer, during the Rosary, as to why 13 was special.

The dual meaning of 13 in standing for the Blessed Trinity and standing for Our Lady's relationship with each Person of the Blessed Trinity appeared in my mind.

It also appeared to me that 13 is associated with betrayal because Judas was among the 13 people present at the Last Supper. Yet, the number 13 being a hallmark of Our Lady means it has been redeemed as the number of fidelity; Our Lady is the ultimate in total fidelity and loyalty; she never strayed from God by sin, and in complete obedience to God's will she agreed to have the power of the Holy Spirit come upon her so she could bear our Saviour.

Our Lady is the mother of Jesus, who is King of kings; because of this Our Lady is Queen of Heaven because, in the House of David, it is not the wife but the mother of the king who is made queen.

Our Lady is the Smile of Heaven, as she is the masterpiece of God the Father's hands who sculpted her sublime smile to give Heaven a feminine charm. Our Lady as Spouse of the Holy Spirit is the Hammer of Heresies, smashing to smithereens false teachings about God because she is the Spouse of the Spirit of Truth.

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FEATURE

Praying for Tolkien Matt Showering reports on the great writer’s devotion to the Blessed Sacrament

O

n Saturday 2 September, a Traditional Low Mass was held at the Oxford Oratory to mark the anniversary of the death, in 1973, of world-renowned Catholic writer and philologist JRR Tolkien. The Mass was offered, however, not for the repose of Tolkien's soul – but rather praying for his Cause for Beatification to be opened.

Many Catholics might be surprised to learn that anyone would consider the author of The Lord of the Rings a serious candidate for sainthood, or indeed that he was a Catholic – which is a very sad indictment of the levels of knowledge and understanding prevalent among the faithful today. For within his most famous work alone are to be found deep and profound meditations on temptation, vocation, redemption and grace; unmistakable echoes of Our Lord's Farewell Discourses, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension; and the most distinctly Marian language that it would be possible to use to describe fictional characters.

The Mass itself was fittingly celebrated in Tolkien’s old parish church (dedicated to St Aloysius) with his granddaughter among the congregation. The Provost of the Oratory, Fr Daniel Seward, spoke in his short homily of Tolkien’s devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, describing it as “the great romance of his life – though I'm not sure what Mrs Tolkien would've made of this!”

Years earlier, Tolkien biographer Humphrey Carpenter vividly described the scene on saints’ days when the author, “not an early riser by nature”, would wake early without fail to attend Mass before beginning his busy day of academic and family duties. A look at the sheer volume of his published work, which even now continues to hit our bookshelves anew, serves only to make such devotion seem all the more heroic. To say nothing of the fact that I personally have found such overwhelming spiritual quality in his earlier works of mythology that my inclination upon finishing a chapter is to bless myself!

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Tolkien’s grave at Wolvercote: within his most famous work alone are to be found deep and profound meditations on temptation, vocation, redemption and grace After Mass (and lunch at Tolkien's later watering hole, the Lamb & Flag), a group of us went to Wolvercote Cemetery to pray the Rosary for Tolkien’s beatification, the repose of the souls of his family members (including his eldest son, Fr John Tolkien, buried nearby), for an end to abortion and the conversion of England – together with the Beatification Prayer composed by the online group campaigning for his Cause to be opened. Also buried nearby is the writer Stratford Caldecott, for whom Tolkien’s works were instrumental in his conversion to Catholicism.

For more information about the prenascent Cause, please email the priest leading the campaign, Don Daniele Pietro Ercoli SDB, at daniele.ercoli@ astori.it – you can also follow it online by looking up ‘Cause of Canonization of

JRR Tolkien’ on Facebook. Here follows the Beatification Prayer.

“O Blessed Trinity, we thank You for having graced the Church with John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and for allowing the poetry of Your Creation, the mystery of the Passion of Your Son, and the symphony of the Holy Spirit, to shine through him and his subcreative imagination. Trusting fully in Your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, he has given us a living image of Jesus the Wisdom of God Incarnate, and has shown us that holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life and is the way of achieving eternal communion with You. Grant us, by his intercession, and according to Your will, the graces we implore… hoping that he will soon be numbered among Your saints. Amen.”

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LETTERS

Letters to the Editor Liturgical smörgåsbord As a resident of Sweden, James Bogle’s article (Autumn Mass of Ages) referring to the Pope’s visit struck a chord.

At best, the trip will make no lasting impression. The Lund ecumenical service in the 12th century Romanesque cathedral was a strange, cobbled-together affair conforming to no obvious liturgical template. It gave a confused message.

The Swedish Catholic bishop, now Cardinal Arborelius, who was interviewed on television afterwards with the Lady Archbishop of Uppsala, head of Svenska Kyrkan, the Swedish National Lutheran Church, was visibly embarrassed by questions which he could not answer without causing an upset.

More embarrassing were the Pope’s comments in the plane on the way home; he said what the Swedish bishop could not.

Svenska Kyrkan will continue its decline. The Catholic Church in Sweden has itself become so Lutheranised that its services are almost indistinguishable from those of the actual Lutherans; any traditional Catholic music which happens to get into a Catholic Mass does so through a smörgåsbord approach to liturgy which draws primarily on Lutheran and English Anglican and Nonconformist sources, sometimes with ludicrous results, as when Britain’s favourite funeral hymn, “Abide with me”, was used a couple of years ago at an ordination!

The day after the Lund event came the Mass at Malmö; this was an afterthought, since the original plans for the visit had not included anything much for the Swedish Catholics, the purpose of the visit being to commemorate 500 years of the Reformation.

Arranged at short notice, it was held out of doors in a football stadium, hardly suitable for an event in Sweden in November. For most of the congregation it involved leaving by 4am for a start at 9.30.

True to form, the liturgy was a smörgåsbord. What was in Latin was familiar to everyone in the multi-national congregation which reflected the composition of the Catholic Church in Sweden today: Missa de Angelis (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus), Credo III, Mysterium fidei, Pater Noster. The reasons for using Latin were explained by the TV commentator: that it is a universal and unifying language unconnected to any particular nation or ethnic group.

Unfortunately, the Latin was compromised by an eclectic musical programme that, taken as a whole, was weird, verging on the perverse. There were newish pieces of TV-ad quality, a couple of 19th century Anglican hymns, and, worst of all, at the Communion, a couple of Lutheran hymns from the 17th century Swedish Empire period of Gustav II Adolf, scourge of Catholics throughout Europe. Of the Proper for All Saints’ Day itself there was there was nothing – not even the easily sung Introit Gaudeamus; the liturgy kicked off with “For all the Saints” by Vaughan Williams at a cracking light infantry pace. Nor were heard any of the compositions appropriate to a Papal visit, such as Tu es Petrus.

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Not only does this speak of a diocese that, at top level is out of touch and out of sympathy with the Catholic musical heritage; it also points to a lack of appreciation for this heritage by whoever in the Vatican approved the programme.

Nevertheless, the Mass at Malmö was a memorable day for those with the stamina. The majority, never having been exposed to the riches of traditional Catholic worship, were well satisfied with this anaemic fare.

The worrying thing is that this is about as good as it is going to get from now on. The liturgical revival that seemed to be gathering momentum in the last years of Pope John Paul II and under Benedict looks as if it will prove to have been a swansong.

Experience under Pope Francis shows the importance of the influence from the centre on the liturgy. Will the next Pope be a Francis or a Benedict? Within the College of Cardinals, there are but a handful of potential Benedicts. The odds that one will be elected are low. And even if elected, “Benedict XVII” would have a battle royal on his hands. Bearing in mind the old adage “Lex orandi, lex credendi”, what real hope is there for the Latin church? Is “nowhere” really the answer to the question, “Where else is there to go?”

Henry Law Via email

Of monks and mothers With reference to the autumn 2017 edition of Mass of Ages and the article on the works of Martin Luther, I agree absolutely! Earlier this year, one "Catholic" publication filled two pages extolling the "virtues" of this recalcitrant monk.

Sadly, as I am sure many of us will know, there are those both clergy and laity who tell us that as long as it's "Christian" then it's OK! We may well enquire as to whether the established Church has come off the rails and ask that the real Church please stand up. We need to put these things into our prayer and make some kind of meaningful reparation depending on our circumstances. As well as offering Dr John Rao's book higher up the chain, so to speak, we might think to include some of our clergy in particular those versed in Vatican II and its "benefits". That said, we should not panic.

All of what we are seeing is surely consistent with Pope St Leo X's vision of 13 October 1884 and will come right in the end as Our Lady promised?

Even having not seen Dr Rao's book, I expect that it is right on target.

As for "Marry Him and Be Submissive" (Autumn book review) my first impression is not too good given the portrayal on the book’s cover of what appears to be a young mum prancing about in trousers on the cover.

Given that within the Catholic Church divorce and separation rates do not differ markedly from those of society in general, there is a long overdue need for proper instruction

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LETTERS

on the true meaning of marriage but will the aforementioned book bridge this gap?

As Catholics we should not teach ourselves according to what other churches pass off as Christian. But, it has to be said that some of these other churches appear to have very firm ideas about what is right and what is not for women's apparel. St Peter's is able to enforce a dress code but very many of our churches at home seem quite unperturbed. The "modern" woman shows a marked preference for wearing trousers unlike say, our mothers or grandmother's generation. It now seems from the female viewpoint that it is quite in order for them to wear trousers but the wearing by any male companion of blouses or skirts is distinctly off limits - as it rightly should be - and yet they speak of "equality"!

Why might this be?

On June 20 of this year, a Polish monk-priest, Fr Karol Meissner, died at the age of 90 years. As well as being a priest, he was a qualified medical practitioner. Having spent a large part of his life studying the psychology behind human sexuality, Fr Meissner concluded that out of every three women, two had difficulty accepting womanhood. It is of course within a woman's body at the moment of conception that body and soul come together but somehow, for the "modern" woman, this is simply not good enough.

Motherhood is seen as something unmeritorious, onerous and unrewarding. The "modern" woman much prefers to be mixing concrete, driving a bus or whatever else. I think it was in 1848 that Karl Marx described marriage as something on the lines of a mechanism for the oppression of women by men. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, within just three years, the Soviets legalised abortion and banished the institution of marriage promoting "free love" and so on. This surely is a part of the "errors of Russia" of which Our Lady of Fatima spoke? Less than one hundred years later, in many countries, we witness extensive redefinition of the meaning of marriage, all such redefinition being gravely contrary to God's law.

It goes without saying that the Blessed Mother with Her "fiat" is the model of motherhood and the pattern for all mothers but somehow too many of us seem not that bothered.

What can we do to restore motherhood and marriage to the dignity that they truly deserve?

Vigil and investiture On Friday and Saturday 18-19 August the Grand Priory of Great Britain of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem, held its vigil and investiture in the church of St Catherine Laboure in Faringdon, Lancashire.

The investitures took place during Extraordinary Form Solemn Mass celebrated by Fr William Charlton of the diocese of Middlesborough.

The ceremony was carried out by His Eminence the Baron Fetternear (Grand Prior) and Fr Simon Henry (Grand Chaplain). Also present was the Vice Lord Lieutenant of the County of Lancashire, Colonel Alan Jolley.

The choir sang the Proper of the Mass in plainchant and the Ordinary was the Mass of St Cecilia by Dom J.E.Turner OSB. Members enjoyed a meal in a local restaurant following the vigil service and a celebratory lunch in the Faringdon Lodge Hotel adjacent to the church after the Investiture.

The Order of St Lazarus is the only Catholic order which welcomes Christians of other traditions as members and is under the protection of Cardinal Duka OP. The order financially supports the treatment of lepers in Sri Lanka, and the church in that country, led

by Cardinal Ranjith, recognises the great difference this support makes.

More details of the order can be found on the internet or direct from: David and Theresa O'Neill, 34 Morston Drive Dumpling Hall Estate Newcastle Upon Tyne NE15 7RZ david-oneill3@sky.com

Letters should be addressed to: The Editor, Mass of Ages, 11-13 Macklin Street, London WC2B 5NH email editor@lms.org.uk Letters may be edited for reasons of space

Jozef Bubez, Via email

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CATHOLIC TRADITIONS

A visual Gospel Joseph Shaw looks at the history of the Christmas crib

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urely no Catholic family home is complete, at Christmas, without a Crib: a three-dimensional representation of the Stable at Bethlehem, with its inhabitants. Like the Easter Garden discussed in an earlier edition of this magazine, the Crib not only marks the liturgical season, but lends itself to the marking of specific days. The Christ Child can be placed in the hitherto empty manger on Christmas morning (or on return from Midnight Mass), and at the same time the shepherds can join the Holy Family, the ox and the ass, and the angels. The three Wise Men can join the throng at Epiphany. The whole arrangement should of course remain on display until the end of the Christmas season, which is not Boxing Day, as some of our secular neighbours appear to imagine, but Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification, on 2 February.

The history of the Crib is an interesting one. It is clearly a cousin of the Medieval Mystery Play, another way of representing and making vivid key scenes from Scripture, which embedded them in the late Medieval Catholic imagination. It would seem that we have an exact time and place for the establishment of this tradition.

According to St Bonaventure, St Francis of Assisi, obliged to organise a Midnight Mass out of doors because of the large number of the faithful at Grecio, Italy, in 1223, had the idea of having a manger on display, complete with straw and, presumably, a full-sized bambino figure.

Recognising that this was something of an innovation, St Bonaventure notes that St Francis got permission for it from the Pope himself. When the time came to place the child in the crib, a respected former soldier, Master John of Grecio, solemnly affirmed afterwards that he had seen the bambino come alive in St Francis’ arms.

One connection worth noting is between the St Francis’ crib and his singing of the Gospel on this occasion (Francis was ordained deacon, never a priest). The crib is a visual Gospel,

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and its place in churches is entirely appropriate, as well as in private homes.

Clearly the tradition of representations of the Infant Jesus, in cribs and in other contexts, became very popular in the Church as time went on.

While taking part in the Roman Forum Summer Symposium in Gardone Riviera in northern Italy last July, I visited the rather unique local Museo del Divino Infante (Museum of the Infant Jesus).

This houses an astonishing collection of large figures of the Christ child, the majority of them dating from the 18th century, many of them from Spain.

These are really charming, without descending into sentimentality. They are more realistic than the tiny adults one sees in some Medieval representations of the Infant Jesus, but they are still endowed with dignity and serenity, even authority; one could actually pray before them. The artificial emotions of sentimentalism make art useless for devotional purposes.

The 18th century displays for public veneration, in churches, were joined by domestic versions. The same museum has an enormous display of Neapolitan crib figures from that century, in an extended landscape, a scene which

includes not only the saints, shepherds, and wise men directly involved in the story, but people going about their business in the village and nearby countryside. The figures are wooden, wearing specially tailored clothes, and were gathered by the German art collector Hiky Mayr.

The domestic crib scene took on special significance in revolutionary France. With the closure of churches and religious persecution, there was a greater focus on the devotional life of the home. In Provence, in particular, the domestic nativity scene became firmly established, populated by ‘santons’ (little saints), which are still produced and displayed in the region, which like their 18th century precursors can include the nearby peasants, innkeepers, and layabouts. The figures are made of clay, and sometimes, again, wear fabric clothes. Local museums and displays of these are worth a visit from readers who find themselves in Provence.

The tradition of domestic nativity scenes represents a wonderful survival of folk art and popular piety, purified in the furnace of persecution.

Nativity scenes can be purchased from the LMS shop.

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COMMENT

Tread carefully Do we still believe in the Devil? asks Fr Bede Rowe

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n the last issue, I asked, “Do we still believe in angels?” and said that in this edition I would ask the same question about the Devil. It is always with some trepidation that the subject of the Devil is raised, and rightly so. If what we believe about the Devil is true, then not only should we use a long spoon when supping with him, but we should tread carefully even when discussing him.

The first and most important thing to say about the Devil is that he exists.

This is not a philosophical statement, or one that comes from clever arguments.

No, it comes from the Sacred Scriptures themselves and, more importantly, the reality of his existence must have come from Christ Himself. In the Gospel of St Matthew we hear of the temptation in the wilderness: “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.” (Matthew 4:1) By the very nature of the account, Jesus was alone in the wilderness.

So, if anyone else knows about what happened, Our Lord must have told them. If Christ was tempted by Satan (the Adversary), then the Devil must exist.

By sacred tradition, Satan is the brightest of angels who, because of pride and jealousy of human beings, rebelled against God and fled from God’s sight, bringing with him a third of all the angelic beings. It is they who will fight until the end of time in rebellion against God, and the object of their fight, the goal of the battle, is the human soul. It was because we were created, and the Incarnation would take place, that Satan fought against God. The way the Devil thinks he can hurt God is to drag us from going to Heaven, so that we can abide with him forever in perdition, in Hell.

Of course, if it were a fair and a clear fight, then we would be on our guard.

When there is something important that we must face, we can recognise it,

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and we will do our best to overcome it (and remember that God wants us to do our best – it is He who has already won the fight), but the Devil does not use such obvious tactics. Why would he?

Rather, the temptations come in small ways, little offences against God, little moments of pride and selfishness.

We give in to them day after day, and then, suddenly, one day we wake up and realise that we are far from God and are no longer the people we know we should be, the people that God wants us to be. We decide what is ‘our best’, and we decide it on our own terms, and then suddenly we have become the arbiters of what is right and wrong. We decide what we should do in this or that situation. In fact, all the Devil is doing is playing to our weaknesses (and for each of us those weaknesses are different). He has no need for a big pitched battle when he can achieve the same result through our laziness and inattention.

But, of course, it does not need to be like this, for the Devil has been defeated, and the battle has been won

by Christ. If you like, this is the time of the last skirmishes, with the Devil fighting to the last angel. But that is the danger time, for these skirmishes are where we can be lost. Although Christ has won, this does not mean that we automatically share in His victory; heaven and hell are both real possibilities for us. Just read the Gospels!

For the Devil and his angels, their fate is fixed. They made their choice once and for all. We have the extraordinary ability to turn to God throughout our lives, returning to Him again and again. If we do so, then the Devil will not triumph over us. But he is real, and his intentions are clear.

So, do we still believe in the Devil?

Yes, we do. And if ever we doubt his existence, then the Devil’s work to capture our souls is well on its way.

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FEATURE

Learning Latin Clare Bowskill gets to grips with grammar

O

ro, Oras, Orat, Oramus, Oratis, Or or or ……

Nunc, I should know this.

I will let you into a secret. I have been singing in Latin at Mass for nearly ten years. I have studied Gregorian Chant at Solesmes and at St Cecilia’s on the Isle of Wight, I ran a parish choir who sang mostly in Latin, I even work for the Latin Mass Society…. I should know my fundus from my cubitum.

I could say in my defence, that for many children born in the 1970s, like me, Latin was ‘declined’ shall we say, from the curriculum, certainly if you went to a Catholic state school. Really though I am running out of excuses.

Carpe Diem, it was time for me to start conjugating those verbs and to turn over a ‘tabula rasa’, you could say.

Every year in conjunction with the St Catherine’s Trust Summer School, the Latin Mass Society runs a weeklong Latin Course in the beautiful Arcadian location of the Franciscan Friary in Pantasaph near Holywell in North Wales. The tutors this year, our dramatis personae, were the inimitable Fr John Hunwicke, former Latin and Greek Master at Lancing College and a man who could probably recite The Aenied backwards if called upon. His fellow colleague was Fr Richard Bailey from the Manchester Oratory, an equally great and learned scholar.

There were 15 pupils this year, willing to be thrown to the lions. We were split into two groups according to ability and, thankfully, not pitted against each other in gladiatorial combat.

I will let you guess which group l chose to join, but needless to say led by the formidable force of Fr Hunwicke we started at the very beginning, a very good place to start, with the course manual ‘Simplicissimus.’

Blum, blum, blum, bli blo, blo…..

Ad rem, Simplicissimus is an incredibly comprehensive programme of learning, a magnum opus one could say, for those interested in Ecclesiastical Latin from the point of view of the

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Traditional Roman Missal. Caveat: No Cicero obviously, but plenty of useful exercises in translating the texts we hear so often at Mass.

Mea culpa…

My fellow learned Latinists (et al) came from far and wide to hear our tutors.

Several were from Ireland, one from America, and we counted among us, a seminarian, a priest, a couple of directors of scholas, and many others. While the core emphasis was on understanding that to have good Latin you ultimately have to grasp your grammar, there were opportunities to translate well-known Latin texts such as the Angelus, the Salve Regina and the Credo and then to pray them in their correct context.

Lessons stopped mid-morning each day for a Missa Solemnis (Deo Gratias!) and each evening there was the chance to return to the Friary for Compline in

the Extraordinary Form (more Latin to digest.)

Rex ipsa loquitur The chance to get a good grounding in Latin with such fine scholars is an opportunity not to be missed. While you can only scratch the surface and master the basics of Latin in a week, you get to take your own copy of the course manual home with you and then it is time to do your homework. There is no getting round it, if you want to really know your Panis Angelicus from your Pange Lingua you have to start with the basics. So if you, like me, feel your Latin is not up to scratch, nil desperandum, sign up, next year. It could be an annus mirabilis!

Post scriptum Keep an eye out on the LMS website for details of next year’s course.

The writer making light work of it…

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GREEK AND LATIN

Classics for children Alisa Kunitz Dick on teaching Greek and Latin

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ast September, I began offering lessons to young Catholic children in Latin and Greek.

More specifically, we have been learning ecclesiastical Latin and Koine and Byzantine Greek. My eldest daughter, who is home-educated, was just beginning Reception, and I was eager that she would learn these languages, which I had studied as an undergraduate and then used in my PhD research in medieval philosophy at Cambridge.

I had also observed that the majority of Catholics, from those who attend the Extraordinary Form to those who regularly attend the English novus ordo do not know enough Latin to understand a large part of the missal and have no Greek. In addition, after investigating Catholic curricula in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I had noticed that the standard approach to teaching these languages was through the writings of classical authors, for instance Virgil’s Aeneid, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, or selections from Cicero for Latin, or, Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey, or Plato’s Apology for Greek. This classical approach continues today in the GCSE and A-level curricula. This is the means by which these languages are taught in Catholic schools today, if at all. Now it is obviously beneficial and useful to read these and other classical authors, and I do not want to suggest otherwise, or to suggest that they should be discarded.

What Catholic schoolchildren, however, are not being taught, and perhaps have not ever been taught in recent history, as far as I can tell, is the Catholic tradition: the Scriptures, the liturgy, Church Fathers, and the medieval writers. These include the Septuagint and the New Testament, the writings of St Ignatius of Antioch, St Augustine, St Jerome, St Athanasius, St John Damascene, and St Thomas Aquinas, to take just a few. (I think Hebrew should also have a fundamental role, but that is a topic for another time.)

In fact, the ability to read these authors in their original languages is taught only to graduate students, or to a very few undergraduates.

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These are not, however, especially difficult subjects. It is reasonable to suppose that children can be taught how to read and translate Latin and Greek, just as easily as they can be taught how to read and translate another foreign language, such as Spanish or French, which are common subjects in schools.

And as in the case with languages generally, the earlier one begins, the more intuitive it is and the more natural one becomes with the language.

‘…we were able to put on a shortened version of a Nativity play in the original Greek’ As it happened, the students who signed up for the classes are all quite young, between three and seven. In Greek, we have been working on learning the alphabet. We play games such as connecting the letters in order to form a picture, tracing sandpaper letters to become familiar with the shapes, and memory games. They also receive badges as they progress,

beginning with the alpha badge, and continuing until they reach the omega badge. Just before Christmas, we were able to put on a shortened version of a Nativity play in the original Greek. In Latin, the children are learning how to speak in short sentences, such as, ‘The daughter is in the kitchen,’ or ‘Where is the bear?’. I use a fox puppet, named Vulpis, who only knows how to speak in Latin, and the children practise speaking with him. They are also learning vocabulary from the Vulgate, such as farm animals and fruits, and they are learning basic prayers in Latin, such as the sign of the cross. A lot of the children have younger siblings who come along, and they sometimes pick up the Latin as well.

As these children get older and more adept at reading, they will move on to reading selections from the Septuagint and the New Testament in Greek, then progress to the early Church Fathers; in Latin, they will progress to the order of the Mass, followed by the office, and then onto the Church Fathers and medieval writers, gradually becoming more advanced and proficient readers.

If similar programs could be started elsewhere, I think it could promote better catechesis among Catholics and make texts accessible which are not considered to be so currently. It would be very lovely to hear a child, perhaps aged eleven or so, read and understand the following:

(…being incorporeal by nature and Logos from the beginning, according to the loving-kindness and goodness of his Father, he appeared to us in a human body for our salvation.) St Athanasius, On The Incarnation of the Word, PG Vol. 25, 97B-C.

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LONE VEILER

The war against women Faith doesn't compromise on the Truth, says the Lone Veiler

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e have the ancient world to thank for democracy. Ancient Athens, particularly the Athens of the 5th century BC, is hailed as the birthplace of all the freedoms we hold so dear today. Along with the art, the philosophy, the dramatists, the architecture - so highly thought of even a couple of thousand years ago, that the Romans (so imaginative, the Romans), pinched it all for themselves.

Athens, a beacon of reason and enlightened thinking, contrasting with the harder, more martial and equally famous, democracy of Sparta. Wait.

Sparta? Democratic? Why yes, it was, it was just as democratic in its ancient way as Athens. Sparta even had what we would recognise as a constitutional monarchy, except there were two kings, not one. So what sent me on this present wander into antiquity? The news.

I have been watching with some bemusement the shenanigans and posturing of various flavours of political and apolitical groups recently. Not only flavours, but the whole rainbow of competing and self-contradictory statements from those unhappy with biology, presidents, free speech, stay at home mothers, religion, politicians - you name it, someone has just hated it in the press. Yes, even stay at home mothers, but more of that in a minute.

Here, unlike Athens or Sparta, every citizen can vote. We have a duty to vote, it's an important freedom. Yet the more I see in the media, the more I believe we could be heading back to the dark days of the first “democracies”. Dark because, of course, they weren't really that democratic. If you were enslaved, poor, or just female, you had no say, couldn't vote. Not all citizens were equal, and some were eminently more equal than others. It reminds me that oligarchies were the norm in the ancient world, and throughout all of history, closed groups of individuals have been electing more of the same individuals.

So very, very, self-perpetuating.

Then, as now, a lot of this equality is of course based on filthy lucre and

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contacts. You have the means, you can lobby, you can try and adjust people's thinking under the guise of equality and in a short time you have a group of people right where you want them, especially if you appear to be giving them just what they want. Same today, history is so repetitive. So where, for example, does the stay at home mother fit into all this? She doesn't. She doesn't fit the current Western narrative at all. The concept of a woman being content to bring up her own children, and making considerable financial sacrifices to do so, is anathema. There is so much made of the “rights” of various groups to parenthood in the media, that those just getting on with it and being financially penalised for doing so are ignored at best, and reviled more usually. The war against women is constantly being played out in the media and society in general. We all know the evil one is behind it all, we all know Our Lady will sort him out, but witnessing the anger and hatred against the ordinary family from some quarters is still staggering. When will biology books have to be rewritten? Perhaps there will be addenda, or a helpline for those offended by the XX/ XY-ness of real life. Common sense, science and reason are being sacrificed to the gods of the age.

In ancient Greece, citizen women didn't get out much. They were almost invisible, they had no vote. Yet they were depended upon to provide the next citizen generation, and in spite of our modern media's insistence to the contrary,society today still depends on ordinary families bringing up ordinary children. Invisibly.

Which brings me to free speech, or as our esteemed leaders and news providers practise it, mediated truth, a current challenge for us all. Ancient Greece was famed for its free speech... wasn't it? Uh, heard of ostracism? It was the Greek way. Free speech was only free if you weren't worried about being banished for saying something some folks didn't like. Lots of debating

in private behind closed doors, but in public it was a dodgy thing. No parallels there then.

We all see the world slightly differently. No two people see or describe the colour blue in the same way, the ancient Greeks didn't even have a word for the colour blue, but there is blue in the world, lots of different shades of blue, all beautiful blue. Real Truth is a bit different. You can't have shades of real Truth, our faith doesn't compromise on the Truth, and that's what I hang on to. We have been told by Our Lord that the servant isn't greater than the Master, we are to expect persecution, division, and ridicule; if the world doesn't hate us, we aren't doing it right. Not that this is easy, of course it's not. We have to do the best we can, be true to our Faith and pray. A lot.

' Witnessing the anger and hatred against the ordinary family from some quarters is still staggering' 41

FEATURE

Where St Augustine first preached John Coverdale reports on a magnificent work of restoration in Ramsgate “I see the Church I am erecting at Ramsgate is described as an oasis in the desert… it is literally true. Kent, the land which first received the tidings of Salvation from Blessed Austin.”

(Augustus Pugin, 14 April 1850)

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he Shrine of St Augustine, Ramsgate, built by Augustus Pugin and a notable home for the Extraordinary Form, has recently reopened following a great restoration programme. Ramsgate is a leading light of Tradition and restoration for the Church in England.

On the Isle of Thanet – the beautiful part of Kent that juts out into the sea – the Shrine of St Augustine stands proudly on the cliff top, honouring the great Apostle of the English who arrived near this spot in AD 597. It should be etched in all our memories, that momentous day when St Augustine landed on our shores bringing the Gospel and salvation to the English peoples for the first time. It is here, in Ramsgate, that St Augustine is still venerated today.

“Ramsgate” is a name that, I hope, will become synonymous with the re-evangelisation of England. Just as “Walsingham” summons up England’s ancient devotion to Our Lady, so “Ramsgate” evokes the faith of our fathers which St Augustine first preached here and spread throughout the land.

The Traditional Latin Mass and other Extraordinary Form liturgies are alive and kicking here at this shrine. There is at least one Missa Cantata every week (on Sundays at 12 noon), and sung Vespers every month – more EF Masses are celebrated too throughout the year.

We have been particularly pleased in recent years to have the entire Easter Triduum sung by The Victoria Consort, with generous assistance from the LMS. Adding to the liturgical diversity, the Ordinariate Use is celebrated every Friday at 12 noon. The Shrine is within the Parish of Ramsgate and Minster, and Traditional Masses are also celebrated

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The rood screen

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FEATURE

Pugin’s tomb regularly at the parish church too.

Although restoration works closed the church over Easter this year, we hope this will be revived in 2018. Similarly, at Christmas and other times through the year, the TLM is celebrated here.

St Augustine’s is set up for the Traditional Latin Mass. Entering the church, you see right down the nave, and your eyes are drawn to the huge crucifix – the physical memorial of Our Lord’s Passion – surmounting the beautiful rood screen. Beyond, you can see the choir stalls, and, right at the east end, elevated by steps, the high altar, itself bedecked with a fine tabernacle, a silver-coloured crucifix and candlesticks which glint in the light (designed by Pugin and made by his collaborator John Hardman), all beneath the vivid greens, blues, reds, and golds of the majestic east window.

Here the priest and server regularly go up to the altar of God. Incense is burned, sonorous Gregorian Chant is sung, and all the rites and rubrics of the Traditional Mass give glory to God. The building itself seems to draw you upwards, with its rising gothic arches lifting up your eyes and soul towards the heavens. The soft-yellow Whitby sandstone ashlar walls give the impression of a richly-built house of God, especially in candlelight. The sea air lingers amidst the fragrant incense, bringing freshness and health inside.

As a bishop once remarked to me, with a smile and breathing in deeply, when visiting St Augustine’s, “It just smells so Catholic.”

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None of this is an accident.

In fact, St Augustine’s is reinstating once-derided traditional beauty, with generous help from many private donors, charitable trusts, and a substantial grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The cost of the current project is around £1.1 million.

How can I have got so far in this article without mentioning the founder of this church, the great architect and leader of the Gothic Revival, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin?

Augustus Pugin is a name that should be on the lips of every Catholic in England.

He was born in 1812, the son of a French architectural draughtsman (Auguste) and his Lincolnshire-born wife (Catherine née Welby). He became one of the most influential architects and designers of the nineteenth century, championing

Catholicism and the Gothic style in everything.

He grew up in Bloomsbury and at the age of 15 designed furniture for George IV for Windsor Castle, some of which survived the 1992 fire and is still part of the Royal Collection. Pugin married three times, with two wives predeceasing him.

He had eight children, including three sons who all became architects. Pugin died in 1852, aged just 40 years, but it was said that he had lived two lives in the space of half one.

By the time Pugin died in Ramsgate, he had designed all or part of more than 200 buildings, countless interiors, and furnishings, ceramics, metalware, tiles, windows, and more which continue to inspire designers today. His own house (The Grange, next to St Augustine’s in Ramsgate) became a model of new ways of thinking about domestic architecture.

He led the Gothic Revival, transforming it from a pastiche movement to an architectural vision that spread around the world.

His centre of operations became Ramsgate. Pugin poured his heart and soul (and around £20,000 – a fortune in today’s money) into honouring the arrival of the Apostle of the English, St Augustine, with this church.

“It is worth working all one’s life for – to see a real church with all its fittings in the Isle of Thanet – the cradle of Catholicism in England,” Pugin wrote in 1849.

Until earlier this year, the sanctuary of St Augustine’s was a 1970s re-modelling of Pugin’s original. At that time – surely the 1970s and 1980s was one of the greatest iconoclastic times in the Church’s history?

– the original altar was destroyed, the choir stalls were moved to cover the altar’s original position, the rood screen was removed, and a new simple and plain altar (a mensa on legs) was put right at the

Stained glass in the Pugin chantry

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FEATURE

The altar front western end of the sanctuary. This has been reversed, and the original design has been recreated, using (as far as possible) the original elements.

Pugin has a growing fan base. From the exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1994 (curated by TV antiques expert Paul Atterbury), to the publication of the masterful biography by Rosemary Hill in 2007, the celebrations of the bicentenary of his birth in 2012, and now the revival of St Augustine’s itself, Pugin’s profile is rising. There have been great conservation efforts by the likes of Margaret Belcher, Michael Fisher, Gerard Hyland, Tim Brittain-Catlin, Brian Andrews, Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett, Martin Bressani and many others. Pugin’s fame is sure to expand even further now as the Palace of Westminster – of which he designed so much, and with little contemporary credit – continues. More and more people are recognising Pugin’s genius.

Most importantly, Pugin counted St Augustine’s as his greatest achievement.

“I defy any man to examine St Augustine’s without prejudice and not to acknowledge that it is the revival of the true thing,” he wrote, and again, “Watch the church, there shall not be a single True Principle broken.”

He said that building a church was the greatest thing a man can do, and that is precisely what he did in Ramsgate. For the greater glory of God, he created this ideal

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church where God could be worshipped according to the ancient rites of our Holy Mother the Church.

Pugin passionately believed in the Mass and the liturgical space. Under the influence of Dr Rock he designed many spaces for the Sarum Use. The recent “Pugin Week” festival in Ramsgate featured a talk by Gerard Hyland on this subject, and how Pugin’s designs changed over time to accommodate Tridentine liturgy too. Pugin believed that England could be Catholic again, but only if it realised that it was once a Catholic country. This, he believed, would be brought about by the resurrection of English rites, such as the Sarum Use. He wrote to his friend Clarkson Stanfield in 1842, “…our ancestors were not Roman Catholics, they were English Catholics & of course in communion with Rome.

[W]e have had an English church from the days of Blessed Austen … we are of the old school of our Edwards, Anselms, Thomass [sic] Englishmen to the backbone.” There was no question in his mind that the Church of England was not part of the Catholic Church – no ‘branch theory’ for him! – but he lamented that English Catholics were losing their own history and, with it, the possibility of making England a Catholic country again.

He wrote fondly of hoping one day to see a Catholic procession entering Salisbury Cathedral.

It was the Latin liturgy that he saw as the great act of worship and purpose

of his churches. His writings such as True Principles of Christian or Pointed Architecture and Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture are tours-deforce in re-finding the true meanings, purposes, and uses of different areas of a church. Here in Ramsgate he put that all into use, writing, “here the Catholic faith first took root … [and is] where the old rites may be celebrated - in ancient splendour”.

St Augustine’s, then, is a model liturgical space. Here one of the greatest Catholic ecclesio-architectural minds expressed the pinnacle of his thoughts and abilities. Here you find true tradition in the very stones.

And this tradition is alive! Many Mass of Ages readers may recall the visit of HE Raymond Cardinal Burke to Ramsgate in March 2015, with the accompanying procession of prelates, clerics, professed religious, knights, and lay servers making up the most impressive liturgy at St Augustine’s Shrine since the Reformation – possibly not even surpassed at the pre-Reformation shrine in Canterbury.

But it is not all pomp: Low Masses and simple Missae Cantatae are celebrated in the Shrine frequently, sometimes even privately by just a priest and server, in much the same way that must have happened throughout the penal years and in the majority of Catholic parishes during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

WINTER 2017

FEATURE St Augustine’s is kept open by a loyal and active set of volunteers, but we need extra support. I ask you to help in two ways: firstly, please pray for us. We need your prayers both for continued success at Ramsgate, and for the faith in England.

Secondly, please consider joining the Friends of St Augustine. This is our group of supporters who donate in many ways for our projects and to keep St Augustine’s open. You can join by emailing office@ augustineshrine.co.uk or see our website www.augustine-pugin.org.uk “I wish you could see the service at St Augustine’s. Everything sung in plain chant & and in the chancel by choristers in surplices – it is quite the old thing revived,” Pugin wrote in 1849. I wish you could too. Ramsgate is just 75 minutes from London by train, making this a wonderful opportunity for a day trip or a weekend away on pilgrimage to honour the Apostle of the English. May St Augustine intercede for us and our country as we continue to proclaim our faith. In the words of Pugin’s motto, Forward – “En Avant”!

St Augustine’s is open 10am - 4pm every day. For more information call 01843 606756, or see www.augustinepugin.org.uk John Coverdale has recently been appointed to the staff of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales to work on historic churches. He has worked on the restoration and revival of St Augustine’s for the past three years.

The sanctuary viewed from the nave The Latin Mass Society has been integral to the provision of Traditional Latin Masses at St Augustine’s. The Shrine is incredibly grateful for the generous support from the LMS, which is doing so much to support, grow, and encourage the faith at the very place where the faith was first brought to our shores.

Now, following the major works, 2018 will mark a sea change with the liturgies celebrated in the restored chancel for the first time. Although this phase of restoration has been completed, there is still more to do. Firstly, we need an altar.

The original altar was destroyed in the 1970s, so we are commissioning a replica.

Any help with the costs will go to this excellent cause. We are also in the final stages of having the organ repaired, and a new console made, for which we need financial assistance. There are more roofs to mend, windows to repair, and outreach to be undertaken, and, of course, our daily running costs.

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The Chapel and The Grange

Photos by Antonia Robinson

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CROSSWORD

Clues Across

1 ‘--- ---- loquitor’, ‘the thing speaks for itself’ [derived from law] (3,4) 5 St. Catherine de -----, 16th c. Dominican visionary and mystic (5) 8 ‘--- canto’, style of singing associated traditionally with Italy and ‘beautiful’ arias (3) 9 One of the vows taken by monks and nuns entering the consecrated life (9) 10 North African city sounding like an early Christian symbol (5) 11 Building in Capernaum where Jesus taught His body was true food and His blood true drink [John 6] (9) 14 ‘Natum videte regem ---------’, Adeste Fideles (9) 18 Prepare with appropriate items and clothing (5) 21 The rational powers of the mind (9) 22 Bd. Joan of ---, mother of St. Dominic (3) 23 St. John of the -----, Feast Day 24 November (5) 24 One of twenty in a complete Rosary (7)

Clues Down Alan Frost: October 2017

ANSWERS FROM AUTUMN 2017 CROSSWORD

Across: 1 Transit 5 Est De 8 Ewe 9 Diligence 10 Adieu 11 Catacombs 14 Richeldis 18 Knell 21 Et Dimitte 22 Sit 23 Gaels 24 Marists Down: 1 Teenager 2 Alexis 3 Sadducee 4 Talbot 5 Ergo 6 Tantum 7 Eger 12 Cask Beer 13 Stylites 15 Candle 16 Dictum 17 Deesis 19 Berg 20 Amos

Closing Date & Winner

Closing date for the crossword entries: Friday, 15 December. The winner of the autumn 2017 competition is Mrs Ross from Cornwall.

1 Erithacus --------, the seasonal robin (8) 2 Girl’s name derived from the Latin word for a forest (6) 3 Idea put forward with marriage in mind? (8) 4 ‘-- ---- chance’, 50/50 situation for success or failure (2,4) 5 Altar feature for the receiving of Holy Communion (4) 6 Former punishment for schoolboys! (6) 7 A genus of plants including holly and (Fatima) the holm-oak (4) 12 ‘Ad te suspiramus -------- et flentes’ Salve Regina (8) 13 Jan. 6th Feast Day restored as a Holy Day of Obligation (8) 15 Early (d.1337) and very influential Italian artist of major religious works (6) 16 Save in the manner of Christ (6) 17 Member of clergy assistant to parish priest (6) 19 Metal, a constituent part of brass (4) 20 Charitable gifts to the poor (4)

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St Catherine's Trust: advance notice of Family Retreat, to be led by priests of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, at the Oratory School, near Reading, 6-8th April (Low Sunday weekend).

Gregorian Chant Network: advance notice of the Chant Training Weekend, to be led by Christopher Hodkinson and Fr Guy Nichols, at the Oratory School, near Reading, 6-8th April (Low Sunday weekend).

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The Verdi Bears’ Picnic’

by Aileen Boyd-Otley is now available as a Kindle ebook/ePub Price: £3.99 Aileen was devoted to the Latin Mass, and wrote this best-selling children’s novel in 1967.

The Guild of St Clare Sewing Retreat 2018 is now fully booked. Reserve a place on the waiting list on the LMS website, or register your interest for 2019 by emailing Lucy on lucyashaw@gmail.com.

Why not visit her website: www.aileenboyd-otley.co.uk Classified advertisements cost just 50p per word with an additional charge of just £5 if you’d like your advertisement in a box, so whether you run courses, a small hotel, a B&B, a retreat or have something to sell or a service to offer that would be of interest to our readers just contact us on 020 7404 7284.

Categories include: • Property for sale or to rent • Travel • Accommodation • Art • Courses • Gardening • Personal • Books • Jobs WINTER 2017

MACKLIN STREET

Summorum Pontificum – 10 years on

I

To celebrate this anniversary, we organised a Pontifical High Mass in St Mary Moorfields Church, London on Thursday, 14th September – Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Bishop Mark Jabalé OSB, Emeritus Bishop of Menevia, was the celebrant, Mgr Gordon Read the Assistant Priest, Fr John Hemer the Deacon and Fr David Evans the Subdeacon. Canon Poucin de Wouilt ICKSP was MC1 and Richard Pickett, as MC2, led a band of dedicated servers. Music was supplied by Cantus Magnus, under the direction of Matthew Schellhorn.

There were a number of priests in choir.

Our thanks to Fr Christopher Vipers, parish priest of St Mary Moorfields for his hospitality and to all who helped make this a fitting celebration.

WINTER 2017

© Clare Bowskill

t is hard to believe that it is 10 years since Pope Benedict XVI issued his motu proprio. So much has happened in those ten years, and so much more needs to happen, to make the Traditional Latin Mass available to people throughout England and Wales. No one can doubt that the work the Latin Mass Society has done during these 10 years (and, indeed, throughout its 52 year history) has played a crucial role.

Celebrating at St Mary Moorfields Church, London

www.twitter.com/latimmassuk (@latinmassuk) www.facebook.com/latinmassuk To contact the General Manager, Stephen Moseling, please email stephen@lms.org.uk or telephone the office.

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