Letters to the Editor

The debt to Canon Lordan

The appeal for prayers for the speedy recovery from ill health of Canon Bernard Lordan by Kevin Jones (Diocesan Digest – Mass of Ages, spring 2020) failed fully to convey just how much the Latin Mass Society owes him.

During the 20-plus years when my father, Edmund Waddelove, was Diocesan Representative in Menevia (and later Wrexham) and Shrewsbury, Father Lordan (as he then was) became the only priest to offer a regular monthly Mass in the Old Rite and the Third Mass of Christmas Day, and he did both for a decade.

He was instrumental, too, in beginning the Annual LMS Holywell Pilgrimage and in 1997 said the Requiem Mass (Tridentine, of course) for my mother, Bernadette.

Father's reward for his embracing of the spirit of Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio was, in my opinion, to be exiled to Dolgellau in deepest Wales, but he continued with his monthly Mass there undeterred.

In more recent enlightened times, he rightly became a Canon of Wrexham Cathedral and in the nearby parish at Llay has offered the Old Mass during most months of the last 10 years. He was the celebrant, too, at my father's 2013 Requiem Mass.

He deserves every prayer we can offer for him!

Adrian Waddelove - via email

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Teaching our children the true Faith

Hard on the heels of Canon Ryan Post's article about St Benedict's Academy in Preston in the Winter 2019 issue of Mass of Ages we had the lovely article by Barbara Kay about a second hybrid school in Bedfordshire, Regina Caeli, in the spring 2020 issue.

What a great grace to have not just one but two such schools, to teach our children the true Faith, and what a marvellous demonstration of the work of the Holy Spirit that He should inspire people in different places, and independently of one another, to create these.

In the midst of so many negative reports on the state of the Church from all sides, it is wonderful to have these encouraging signs.

Bob and Jane Latin - via email

The benefits of Friday abstinence

As usual I very much enjoyed Lone Veiler’s article in your spring 2020 issue and I wholeheartedly endorse her general points about food production – meat eaters do indeed have a duty to treat animals humanely.

I note too that she refers in passing to the tradition of eating fish on Fridays – I have always thought this a tradition we should uphold and I’m not sure it was ever a good idea for the rule of Friday abstinence to be relaxed. The modern world tells us that fish is good for our physical well-being – another reason for eating it on Fridays. But more importantly Friday abstinence is good for our spiritual well-being.

P.R. Foster - via email

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Don’t remove the mystery!

Your Chairman’s excellent message in the spring issue of Mass of Ages makes, by implication, the vital point that moving to the vernacular and thereby removing the mystery from the Mass – making it prosaic, run-of-the-mill, thumpingly obvious and frankly dull – has only hastened the decline of attendances at Mass. The Latin Mass even for those of us with schoolboy Latin (or less!), was and is a living link to the ancient Church and a re-living of the greatest drama in history.

Robert Benford - via email

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