Mass of Ages Winter 2015

Mass of Ages The quarterly magazine of the Latin Mass Society

Issue 186 – Winter 2015

JUBILEE YEAR – FREE

‘Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee...’

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS: Rev James Mawdsley Martin Baker Dom Cassian Folsom

Tim Stanley on The Selfie Generation John Newton on Religious Freedom Mary O’Regan on Home-Schooling

CONTENTS

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

COMMENT 2

Introduction

3

Chairman’s Message

8

‘Generation Selfie’: Tim Stanley

10-11

St Bede’s: Twenty Years of the Old Mass

12-13

‘Why a Shrine?’: Neil Addison

15

Letters to the Editor

18

A Prophecy for Our Time: Mary O’Regan

19

Mass Intentions: Fr Bede Rowe

20

Error Has No Rights: Dr John Newton

21

What is Truth?: The Lone Veiler

42

Roman Correspondent: Dom Cassian Folsom

47

Prayer Books and Calendars: Macklin Street

NEWS & FEATURES 4-5

Interview with Deacon James Mawdsley FSSP

5

Mass Returns to the Marsh: Marygold Turner

6 & 7

Gregorian Chant is the Liturgy Interview with Martin Baker

7

Summer School Success

14-15

St Mary’s, Warrington: Paul Waddington

16

In Illo Tempore & Liturgical Calendar

17

Crossword

22-23

Art & Devotion: The Immaculate Conception

24-25

A Solemn Requiem for Richard III

26

Walsingham and Mercy: Mgr John Armitage

43

Juventutem: First Ever Social Weekend

44

Juventutem: The London Chapter

45

Book Review: Takedown

46

Visiting Papa Stronsay: Alan Frost

DIOCESAN REPORTS & EVENTS 27-34

MASS LISTINGS 35-41 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 permisison 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 writen permission.

The Way of Beauty

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hose who cherish the Old Mass also tend to appreciate the via pulchritudinis – the way of beauty. After all, the Traditional Mass is known for its sublime and transcendent beauty. The via pulchritudinis is a path on which the Church has always endeavoured to draw souls closer to that ‘Beauty ever ancient, ever new’, as St Augustine describes God. Looking at the painting of the Immaculate Conception which adorns the cover of this edition of Mass of Ages (and which features on pp 22-23), a line from an antiphon springs to mind: ‘Tota pulchra es, Maria’ – ‘You are all beautiful, Mary.’ Among all God’s creatures, there is none so beautiful as her. When we look at her, we see what beauty really is – it is sanctity. She who reflects her Divine Son, embodies beauty. Full of grace, she is gentle and humble – ever willing to answer God’s call. She is the gateway on to the way of beauty, and is also one who has trod as a pilgrim along its paths.

One of the most amazing things about the Blessed Virgin Mary is how young she was when she gave her ‘Fiat’. According to tradition, she was only a teenage girl – not much older than those preparing to take their GCSE exams – when she consented to become the Theotokos, the Mother of God. Young people often receive a bad press. Adolescence and early adulthood can be a difficult time, and some youngsters do go off the rails. But not all; or not always. One of the great treasures of Traditional Catholicism is Juventutem – a youth movement that encourages holiness through participation in the Latin Mass. Juventutem witnesses to the fact that the via pulchritudinis is a path on which people of all ages may walk, though it seems a particularly attractive one to the young.

The next few weeks are wonderful ones in the life of the Church. November reminds us of the Communion of Saints and of our ultimate destiny; Advent is a time of personal renewal and true contemplation on the things that matter; Christmas brings news of the Incarnation and of everlasting Joy; while the Epiphany and Candlemas open up our eyes to some of the deepest mysteries of our Faith.

Therefore, in offering you this edition of Mass of Ages, I also wish you every blessing for the coming feasts and seasons.

Dylan Parry

The Latin Mass Society 11-13 Macklin Street, London WC2B 5NH Tel: 020-7404 7284 editor@lms.org.uk PATRONS: Sir Adrian Fitzgerald Bt, Lord (Brian) Gill, Sir James MacMillan CBE, Colin Mawby KSG, Charles Moore COMMITTEE: Dr Joseph Shaw – Chairman; Paul Waddington – Treasurer; David Forster – Secretary; Paul Beardsmore – Vice President; James Bogle; Kevin Jones; David Lloyd Stefano Mazzeo; Roger Wemyss Brooks;

Front cover picture: Diego Velázquez, The Immaculate Conception © The National Gallery, London. Bought with the aid of The Art Fund, 1974

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Mass of Ages No. 186

Registered UK Charity No. 248388

Of your charity, we ask your understanding of the reality that, due to the considerable volume of e-mail received at Mass of Ages, it is regrettably not always possible to provide a reply.

MASS OF AGES: Managing Editor: Dylan Parry Design: GADS Ltd Printers: Cambrian Printers Ltd

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

Diversa Non Adversa Dr Joseph Shaw

I

write just after the close of the Synod on the Family, the final days of which coincided with the General Assembly of Una Voce International (FIUV) and the annual pilgrimage organised by the Coetus Internationalis Summorum Pontificum (CISP).

The Synod has concluded with a document which does not represent the decisive break with doctrine, and sanity, that some hoped for, and others feared. It will nevertheless be utilised by those opposed to the teaching of the New Testament on marriage, chastity, and Holy Communion, to advance their views.

Documents sufficiently unambiguous to avoid this fate are perfectly possible: this Synod pulled its punches. Synodical documents are typically born of negotiation and compromise, but the authors would do well to remember that a document which can be read by everyone as confirming their existing views, will not actually teach anything.

For the first time, the FIUV’s General Assembly and the Latin Mass Society pilgrimage to Rome were coordinated with the CISP Pilgrimage. Singers sponsored by the Latin Mass Society, under our Director of Music for London, Matthew Schellhorn, sang for the pilgrims in San Lorenzo in Damaso, in the FSSP church of Sta Trinita, and in the Domus Australia where the FIUV General Assembly took place. Such collaboration requires a great deal of work, but the result was a profound demonstration of the cultural heritage, as well as the vibrant personal piety, that the Traditional Movement can call upon. It also cements friendly relations among the groups involved. Our movement is made up of many components, lay, religious, and priestly, with many different gifts and a very clear sense of common purpose. We reflect the Catholic principle of diversa non adversa: diversity without adversity.

The FIUV itself has more than 40 members from more than 30 countries, all of which value the ability of the Federation’s leadership to build relations with the Roman Curia and represent their interests there. At the General Assembly we elected a new Council and a new President. I was the outgoing Treasurer, and also Acting Secretary. I was re-elected to the Council, but have thankfully laid down those other responsibilities. We now have a German Treasurer, Monika Rheinschmitt, a Spanish Secretary, Juan Manuel Rodríguez y González-Cordero, and a French Vice President, Patrick Banken. The President, Felipe Alanís Suárez, is from Mexico, and our first from outside Europe. I will continue to develop the series of ‘Position Papers’ the FIUV has been publishing, a role of considerable responsibility, and I hope I will continue to repay the trust reposed in me for this task: not so much in developing the Federation’s policies, as articulating and defending the shared instincts which motivate our movement of liturgical restoration.

I wish our new President all the best for his term of office, and I have already pledged not only my own support, but the support of the whole Latin Mass Society for his vital work.

We can be proud to see, on our 50th Anniversary, that our Society has great significance for the Federation, because of our membership, activities, and resources. We can be even more proud that these assets can be used to good effect for the common good of a united and harmonious movement.

With this edition of Mass of Ages we are enclosing, in copies sent to members by post, a copy of our new Ordinary Booklet.

I have been closely involved in this project, though I can only claim an editor’s traditional responsibility for its errors, and not for the excellent features contributed by many hands.

The latter include newly drawn diagrams, newly set chant, and above all a new translation of the Latin of the Mass. This tends to follow the new translation of the Novus Ordo, where applicable, but with traditional language – ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, with Scriptural references reflecting the Challoner Douai Bible. The booklet has features found in few if any missals for the laity: the ‘long’ Prayer for England, the traditional version of the Welsh Prayer for Wales, the Litany of Loreto for use in Benediction, the Angelus, and variants in the Mass when celebrated by a bishop. We hope that it will be a guide to the Traditional Mass and a stimulus to piety for Catholics in England and Wales, and beyond, for many years to come.

As a postscript I have been asked by a researcher to appeal for memories or documents relating to the priest and novelist Fr Owen Francis Dudley (d. 1952). Like many members of the Catholic literary revival his books and memory have been neglected since the Council, and he deserves to be better known. Please contact the Office if you can help.

‘You know, when Stalin asked how many divisions the Vatican had got, you know I sometimes wonder whether...’

Cracks in the Curia (1972), by Br Choleric (Dom Hubert van Zeller)

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INTERVIEW

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

Growing Up in Exile An Interview with Deacon James Mawdsley, FSSP Clare Stevens

The Revd James Mawdsley was recently ordained as a transitional deacon for the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter. In the late 1990s, he was imprisoned in Burma for his campaigning on behalf of human rights in that country. He was released in October 2000, and entered the seminary at Wigratzbad a few years later. Here he speaks to Clare Stevens about his life, faith and vocation.

What made you become a Seminarian?

© Daniel Blackman

A distinct call on 3 September 2005 to ‘be a priest’, which amazed me, yet filled me with delight and confidence. God is more powerful than my unworthiness.

What sparked your interest in the Traditional Rite?

The buzz on the Internet pre- and post-Summorum Pontificum drew me into studying something that, until then, I did not even know existed. Fr Z’s blog was a great galvaniser.

I began to learn that the theology behind Holy Mass fits perfectly with the Traditional Form, and this theology is enrapturing. It is God’s Word of Love.

I am told that the traditional seminaries are oversubscribed, but that ordinary ones are struggling to attract seminarians – does this reflect your own experience?

It is a joy to be in a seminary full of life. But the healthy numbers is partly because our catchment area is vast. This also means Wigratzbad is very international, with a dozen nationalities. Diocesan seminaries have much smaller catchment areas, so one cannot make a comparison of numbers. However, it is significant that men are willing to travel so far to find a traditional seminary.

What difference has LMS funding made to you following your vocation?

LMS grants were especially helpful when I started seminary.

Thanks to the LMS and other benefactors I have not had to go without anything essential, whether for study or liturgy. So I owe God and a lot of people, inside and outside the seminary, for a solid formation. That said, nobody is turned away from the FSSP due to lack of funds – the seminaries are willing to provide everything needed.

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What would you like to see happening in the Church in the UK as regards the Old Rite – would you like to see more Masses available?

If the Church had Traditional Masses every day in every cathedral, it would offer a deep experience of unity. Moreover, the liturgical life of the Church is the source of soundness in her doctrinal and moral life.

If our bishops were to establish a traditional seminary in England, it would soon attract many vocations. I am sure it would serve stability in doctrine, for the timeless liturgy is a staff to the intellect. Then if Solemn Vespers were once again the norm in parishes on Sundays and major feasts, surely this would purify the Church – for it is so good, so beautiful, that it motivates and elevates us.

What would be your message to anyone saying ‘We don’t need the Latin Mass any more, Traditionalists are stuck in the past and are trying to turn back the clock’?

If you had the chance to visit Calvary for half an hour every day of your life, and there to gaze on your Saviour, would you take that chance? Our answer reveals how much we love Jesus and value Holy Mass.

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015 I need the Traditional Mass in particular because I know my love is much weaker than it ought to be, and the Traditional Mass is of the greatest help for growing in love.

NEWS

Mass at Snave Latin Mass Returns to the Marshes

Were you brought up Catholic?

Marygold Turner

Yes. Our mother took us to Holy Mass each Sunday and as seven-year-olds my brothers and I began serving Masses. But, I fell away as a teenager and fell so far as to forget about the Real Presence. Astonishing, and shameful, what we are capable of forgetting!

When did you first go to a Latin Mass and what were your initial impressions there?

The first time was in spring 2008. Afterwards, I was in tears of wonder for discovering true home, later mixed with anger, too, that this spring of Life had been deliberately filled in and all but stopped – see Genesis 26.

Did you learn Latin at school?

Barely three words. I really started shortly before seminary.

I had never served a Traditional Mass before beginning seminary aged 36. But praying the Divine Office every day in Latin, one grows accustomed to it gently. Some people fear the Old Rite because they mistakenly think they need to know Latin to engage with the Mass. In fact, it reaches us in many other ways than verbal content.

Would you agree with Joseph Shaw – as quoted in the Catholic Herald – that Traditionalism is flourishing under Pope Francis?

In Traditional Catholicism we inherit a vital channel for grace. Pope Francis has no plans for attacking such a gift! So I pray and believe that Traditionalism will continue to recover and to grow afresh.

Why do you think young people are attracted to the Traditional Liturgy?

God has allowed a generation of Catholics to fall into liturgical exile. This generation approved contraception and abortion, yet still went to receive Holy Communion.

Similarly, homosexuality was fostered in some seminaries and pederasty tolerated among priests. But if the coming generation of Catholics learn from those woeful transgressions then why should God not allow them to return to the land, that is the liturgy, of their forefathers?

My generation has grown up in exile and we see that we cannot survive out here, so far from God. We must return to the Land He gave us or soon we will diminish to nothing. And God wants us back.

How did your experiences in Burma influence your faith?

Everywhere in the world we are confronted by searing questions of suffering and evil. It was with a determination to find an answer to these that I went repeatedly to Burma.

The answer astounded me: in Insein prison I discovered Jesus is Divine Living Love; in Kengtung prison I learned the Holy Catholic Church is His Body. Later, I learned it is by worshipping God that we overcome the world.

Last July (2014), I was back in Burma. I met Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Min Ko Naing, a unique joy. And I spent some days with Fr Norman, whom I had not seen for 14 years, since he twice came into prison to say Holy Mass for me. If God wants to use me further for Burma, He can. He knows best. He is Boss.

© John Hendry

I

have long wanted to see the Old Mass celebrated on the Romney Marsh; so many Catholics are buried there. But since the Reformation no Masses have been said in those wonderful, historic, and very beautiful churches.

I had tried before, but a friend of mine asked me last December if I would arrange a Missa Cantata at Snave, one of the Marsh churches. So I set about it, with enthusiasm, but not much hope! My friend, Paul, wanted this in memory of his father and generously wished to finance the event. After jumping a few hurdles and with support from the Anglican and Catholic hierarchies, as well as the Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust, I was successful.

Fr Marcus Holden, from St Augustine’s Ramsgate, agreed to celebrate Holy Mass on 26 September, and David Hurley and Peter Hatton assisted him. The Victoria Consort, under the direction of Ben Bevan, sang a William Byrd setting of the Mass.

On the day itself we were blessed with lovely sunny weather and 75 people came. Due to Paul’s generosity, and another friend, we were able to welcome them after Mass with sandwiches and wine.

Fr Marcus gave a magnificent sermon, and affirmation of faith. The President of the Trust, the distinguished artist John Doyle, addressed the congregation and, since we didn’t blot our copybook, it seems, wants us to repeat our Mass – we certainly shall!

It is very moving after so many hundred years to be able to bring back, albeit briefly, the Old Faith to the Marsh. My thanks to everyone for helping to make this day a truly divine occasion.

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INTERVIEW

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

Gregorian Chant is the Liturgy Martin Baker has been the Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral for the past 15 years. In this interview with Dylan Parry, he discusses the role of music in the liturgy.

What led you to work in the field of Church music?

I come from a strong Catholic family – Irish mother, English convert father – and was immersed in church-going as a young child. My parents were enthusiastic about music and sang in the choir. As a special treat after Communion I was allowed to sit next to the organist, who allowed me to select the organ stops.

Aged four, I asked my father if I could learn the organ and by the time I was seven I was attending Saturday mornings at the Royal Northern College of Music Junior School. It was unusual to begin the organ before the piano – but why not? – and from that point I followed a fairly standard pattern through music school (Chetham’s) to an organ scholarship at Downing College, Cambridge, then to a similar position at Westminster Cathedral.

I came back to Westminster Cathedral in 2000 as Master of Music, having in the meantime held positions at St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. It is significant that as a Roman Catholic musician I spent 15 years working in Anglican churches in order to progress my career to the point that I was able to get my current position.

During your career have you noticed any significant changes in the development of liturgical music?

In recent years, aided by the ease of communication over the internet, there has been a lively debate about the role of music in the liturgy.

When I took up my current position 15 years ago, Westminster Cathedral felt like an isolated post of musical excellence, but that is no longer the case. There seems to be a greater general awareness of the importance of music in the liturgy, and new choral foundations are starting up – Leeds and Notre Dame de Paris being two examples.

James MacMillan has been a great advocate for quality liturgical music, bridging the gap between the concert hall and the church; providing music not only for professional choirs but for small amateur ensembles and congregations, such as the chants he writes for use at St Columba’s in Glasgow.

At Westminster Cathedral, having had a wobble in the 1970s, the unique choral tradition is very much at the heart of the daily pattern of worship here as well as in the Diocese. Having existed in something of a bubble, we now engage with over 500 children from Catholic primary schools in the Westminster and Southwark Dioceses each year.

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Since the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI one has the sense that liturgical traditions recently neglected have been reintroduced and encouraged. Is this also true in the realm of church music?

I think the genius of Pope Benedict was that he started to bring down the barriers that existed between the Old and New Rites, showing in various ways that there can be a healthy and creative osmosis between the two.

Since the liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council, Westminster Cathedral Choir has been leading the way in showing how the music of the Old Rite can work just as well – if not even better – in the New Rite, and since 2005 this has been very much supported by liturgical praxis in Rome. There are those with entrenched views on music and liturgy on both sides, reading the documents as though there is only one correct interpretation, but the documents are cleverly ambiguous and can be read with a variety of legitimate interpretations – and our tradition at Westminster Cathedral is clearly one of these.

The Cathedral Choir is known for leading the field in its performances of early English and Renaissance ecclesiastical music. How do you successfully marry settings and music composed for the Traditional Mass with celebration of the New? It is true that we are known for performing this music, as are an increasing number of ‘authentic’ professional choirs such as The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen and so on. I highlight ‘authentic’ because how is it possible to claim authenticity if the only time this music is performed in church is in concert to a paying audience?

By contrast, Westminster Cathedral Choir sings not in a concert but as an integral part of the liturgy. And this is even more the case, I would argue, in the New Rite than the Old; the Propers and Ordinary of the Mass are given space within the liturgy to speak their message, allowing the full and active participation of all present. This is in contrast to the singing of the same parts in the Old Rite where they are presented in addition to the same texts spoken by the celebrant. It is possible in this case to see the singing as an ornamentation rather than a fundamental aspect of the rite, which is not the case when we sing.

Given that, do you think that Traditional Catholicism is important when it comes to preserving reverent music in the liturgy?

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

NEWS

Certainly it is, and it is a shame that today many Traditional Masses are simple Low Masses, so that only in exceptional cases is it possible to experience the full beauty of the Old Rite in a musical context. But whatever the current praxis, it remains indisputable that the music which Sacrosanctum Concilium espouses as the basic building block of the new rite – Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony – grew up in the Old Rite and is sustained by it.

Properly understood, what do you think the role of music should be within the Mass and liturgy in general?

Last term, I participated at a conference at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral on ‘Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform after Vatican II’, and was particularly struck by the address given by Fr Gerard Byrne on ‘Gregorian Chant in the Modern Liturgy’. He listed the usual arguments given in support of Gregorian chant and showed that none of them held up to careful scrutiny.

Instead, he suggested that Gregorian chant is the right choice for the liturgy because it is the liturgy – it grew up with it, and cannot be separated from it. And certainly this is our intention at Westminster – not to provide a concert, nor to stand on show to the congregation, but to sing in such a way that the music and the liturgy cannot be distinguished; the music is the liturgy. This is a question not just of the choice of music but also the manner of its performance.

Being such a world renowned Choir, you’ve performed in many places, including the Vatican, and for many people, including Popes and the Queen. Of all these occasions and liturgies, do any stand out in particular for you?

It’s difficult to pick, but the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Westminster Cathedral must be one of the highlights, as were our two return visits to Rome to sing in the Sistine Chapel and at the consistory for Cardinal Nichols, at which two Popes were present! But despite all the wonderful and enjoyable opportunities we have to sing or to broadcast around the world, there is no experience better than standing with the choir in the apse, producing great music for the daily Mass at the Cathedral.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

In addition to my work at Westminster Cathedral, I maintain an active and busy career as an organist, playing concerts at home and internationally throughout the year, often including improvisations.

For me, music is about travel: getting from A to B but without satnav or a predefined path, enjoying the spontaneous choices one can make along the route but always bearing in mind the destination. No two performances are, or should be, the same. So when I have free time I turn not to music for inspiration but to travel and I am an avid touring motorcyclist, having over the last 10 years covered almost all of Europe from the southwest of Spain to the northwest of Ireland, to Norway (not yet to Nordkapp but that’s on my list!), Sicily, Greece the east of Turkey, close to the border with Iraq. I travel with cooking and camping gear so that I can stop anywhere or choose a hotel if I prefer.

It may seem a strange hobby for a cathedral organist but after a month of travel – August is free – I return brimming again with music for the coming academic year!

Photos: Joseph Shaw

Summer School Success

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Clare Stevens

he St Catherine’s Trust celebrated 10 years of its Summer Schools this year with a week-long event in the Franciscan Retreat Centre, Pantasaph, supported by the Latin Mass Society.

Children and young people gained a Catholic perspective on many school subjects and an introduction to Gregorian Chant and art history in the context of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Students and staff also joined the LMS Pilgrimage to Wrexham Cathedral on Saturday in honour of St Richard Gwyn, a Catholic schoolteacher martyred in the town in 1584 (see Diocesan Digest, page 34.)

Dr Joseph Shaw, Chairman of the LMS and founder of the St Catherine’s Trust Summer School, said: ‘The Summer School’s continued success is an indication of the many families, some home-schooling and some not, attached to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

‘During a very busy week we offered students an experience of the Traditional liturgy which could only otherwise be found in a handful of monasteries: sung or Solemn Mass and sung Compline each day, plus teaching on a range of subjects by our enthusiastic volunteer staff, and outings to places of local interest.

‘The eagerness of the children to return next year will ensure the Summer School will continue for many years to come.’

Running alongside the Summer School at Pantasaph was the LMS Latin Course for adults, attended by a dozen people including two priests.

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COMMENT

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

Sanctuary in the Age of the Selfie The Latin Mass challenges the Zeitgeist Tim Stanley

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his summer, the Revd Paul Frost is believed to have become the first vicar ever to use a selfie-stick at a wedding. When the bride reached the altar of St John’s Anglican church in Corby, Frost said: ‘We are gathered here today to join these two in holy matrimony.

But, first, let me take a selfie!’ And that is precisely what he did.

The bride was surprised at first but, later, said that the photo of everyone grinning upwards at the ceiling was ‘special… [he] was such a cool vicar and it made it such a lovely atmosphere.’ And weddings, lest we forget, are all about atmosphere. That’s why the best ones use dry ice at the reception disco.

The writer Susan Sontag once argued that popular photography was a way of making sense of the world – putting a camera between us and something we don’t understand, so that we can create distance and a sense of order. Selfies add reassurance to the mix. The selfie locates us at the centre of events. Something big and scary, something that we don’t understand, suddenly becomes all about us. And what’s more relatable than oneself?

Google ‘Holocaust memorial selfies’ and you’ll see images of people standing amidst tragedy with a selfie stick, blocking out the memorial and replacing it with their own faces. ‘This moment is about me and how I feel,’ says the selfie. ‘Everything you see around me is just context.’

So, of course, people take selfies at weddings. Weddings are, after all, pretty scary. People are literally sick with nerves.

It’s partly because of all the ridiculous preparation that goes into them – soothing family rows, getting the dress right, keeping granddad off the booze, etc. But it’s also because it’s the moment when the ‘self’ surrenders to the ‘partnership.’

Two become one – a farewell to childhood and the ultimate rejection of ego. In religious services, marriage is only partly about the bride and groom. It’s also about the honouring of an institution, the community’s approval and God. The bride and groom are invited to look at each other and make their vows to each other. But they also stand in the sight of the Almighty and are forced to contemplate their relationship with Him. That’s scary. In the midst of all that epic stuff, who wouldn’t want to stop everything, get out a camera, and take a selfie – to reassert control and make it all about ‘me’ again? Who wouldn’t want a vicar who makes it ‘cool’?

Sometimes, traditionalists rail against the changes in our society without appreciating the subtle social dynamics that

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make them possible. Marriage is dying. Divorce is up; the rate of childhood outside of marriage is up; and the institution has been redefined to the point that, in civil terms, it is decoupled from ontological meaning. We might assume that these fast changes unnerve people. In reality, they have responded to deep psychological needs – for comfort or narcissism. The old approach to marriage was far too anti-ego. The modern form of marriage, presided over by trendy priests of all denominations (including Catholics who insist upon singing pop songs), is a celebration of the individual. Even better: it’s a party.

© SWNS.com

In the midst of all this confusion, offering sanctuary, stands the Latin Mass. A rite that rejects ego because it rigidly places the Eucharist at its centre and affirms the priest as celebrant rather than celebrity. And a rite that makes novelty impossible because it can’t be messed about with. No wonder its critics find it so terrifying. It challenges the spirit of an age that wallows in self-importance. It demands of us something that modern society doesn’t ask for anymore. Humility.

Tim Stanley is a broadcaster, journalist and blogger. He regularly writes for the Telegraph, Spectator and Catholic Herald.

Keeping the faith

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

The Noble Work of Restoration Twenty Years of the Old Rite at St Bede’s

Photos: Author’s Collection

Fr Christopher Basden

High Mass at St Bede’s on the Feast of St Bede

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round 1972, as a 19-year-old undergraduate, I became a member of the Latin Mass Society. Having been brought up in the Middle East, I was then at Georgetown University in Washington DC, commuting to my parents in Wimbledon. Like many young adults today, I felt I had missed out on the glory and beauty of our liturgical tradition, in my case because of geographical isolation.

I later allowed my membership of the Society to lapse, because it gradually seemed to me that there were no legal avenues forward, and that the Old Rite had been banned. Many of my generation were caught up in the tsunami of change and however much we regretted the passing of so much Tradition, we didn’t have the wherewithal or knowledge to pursue what we felt so strongly in our bones. I always looked at Archbishop Lefebvre with sympathy and both in the Wimbledon parishes and our Seminary at Wonersh we had those who moved towards the Society of St Pius X.

Mgr Leo White & Fr Christopher Basden (seated), Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP, Fr Casimir of Ghana and Dom Andrew Southwell

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I will never forget the day when I heard the news of the election of Karol Wojtyla to the Papacy. Now, I felt, a man from Poland, cocooned from the ravages of liberalism would surely do something to mend this sad rupture in the Body of Christ, which had affected many of us so personally. My instincts were right: he attempted quite soon to bridge the gap.

Cardinal Seper apparently intervened, but then the first indult (1984) and then the drama of the second indult (1988) paved the way (amidst furious opposition) for a new openness to the Mass of Ages. Sadly, at the end of that decade, our hopes for a restoration of the Faith had not happened. We were in precipitous decline, despite episcopal and papal talk of the new Pentecost. Several times in those years, Fr Hugh Thwaites SJ (who had rediscovered the Old Rite by accident and obtained one of the rare personal indults before the Hume/Worlock veto) asked me if I wanted to say the Tridentine Mass. I still couldn’t see the point.

In 1993/4 I did a years’ sabbatical in the USA, to be close to my elderly parents. On a Florida beach, two priest friends (Mgr James Pereda and Fr Bill Langan) conspired to get me to read Klaus Gamber’s Reform of the Roman Liturgy. I was astonished because it revealed quite plainly that the Novus Ordo was not the early Christian pristine liturgy to which they had returned at the bidding of Vatican II. The next ploy of my good friends was to get me to go on a priests’ retreat at the newly founded Fraternity of St Peter in Pennsylvania. Again, I demurred. So they tempted me by saying that the preacher was to be the famous Fr Ken Baker SJ. At that retreat one of the conferences was a sermon in the context of a Solemn High Mass. I was so overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the experience that all the old allergies and misapprehensions were swept away. I prayed: ‘OK Lord you win – I will go to Le Barroux and try to learn how to say the Old Mass.’

In September of that year, I was there, with paltry Latin and a resistance to memorise! Nevertheless when I was inducted as parish priest of St Bede’s, Clapham Park, on 2 October 1994, I had the intention in my heart to somehow restore the Traditional Mass.

There was only one way through the quagmire of impossibility: the incredible Fr Thwaites. I rang him, but was disappointed to hear he was leaving Spanish Place to go to live with the Jesuits at Chipping Norton.

Weeks went by wondering what I would ever do and I suddenly heard from Fr Kevin Hale that Fr Thwaites was desperate for a pillow and an altar. ‘What happened?’ I asked.

He responded, ‘I love the Jesuits, but I can’t live with them.’

In January 1995, he moved in and began to say the Mass (on Sundays at 8.50am in the Lady Chapel and also on weekdays).

It grew slowly and he was very restless with ideas of serving in some other place of great need. One time he even wrote to his Provincial asking for an assignment and I went behind his back to the same man to beg that he assign Fr Thwaites to

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015 St Bede’s! The latter was delighted, but by early 1997 he was convinced that he should move to Wales and he left in a hurry.

He had an indult: I didn’t What was I going to do now? He had an indult and I didn’t.

At that time Count Neri Capponi argued that canonically one didn’t need an indult, but this was then a minority view. I felt on vulnerable ground. A neighbouring priest who had been a friend began saying that I was guilty of disobedience. I wrote a long letter to Archbishop Michael Bowen, filling it with all the factors and received a two-line response: ‘Thank you for your letter with its many good points.’ Being in a quandary, I then consulted four priests, three of whom said, ‘If he doesn’t say you can’t, then you can.’ The fourth, Fr Hnylacia protested in horror, but for the first time in my life I think I followed the majority view!

I was subsequently hauled over the rails by our Auxiliary Bishop Charles Henderson (of whom I had always been fond), who complained about my lack of special ministers and this ‘Latin Mass.’ He was the one, he told me, who was in charge of ‘Tridentine provision’ in Fr Hugh Thwaites, SJ the Diocese, and he was always able to persuade people that their desire for the Old Mass was misplaced and unnecessary. Furthermore, he felt I had tricked the Archbishop in writing a letter containing so many issues.

Charmed by Marygold A few years later, when he was retired (imagine my surprise), he waxed eloquently about how he had always felt the Old Mass should have continued alongside the New, and how he himself had in fact urged Archbishop Cowderoy to secure this at Vatican II! I think by this time, Bishop Charles had been conquered by the charms of Marygold Turner, and, as he was off the Bishops’ Conference, could now speak his own mind sincerely and fearlessly!

Someone must have been praying for us in 1997, because in March of that year we had four sudden new arrivals – Fr Victor Reiderer SJ, Dom Andrew Southwell OSB, Mgr Leo White (a former Prefect Apostolic in Kenya), and the community of Miles Jesu! The first of these two were keen to celebrate the Old Mass, and a regular schedule was put in place with a daily Mass and eventually a Missa Cantata every Sunday at 10.45 (now 11.00am) – still the only regular Missa Cantata (besides the SSPX) in the whole of London.

It is to Fr Andrew’s credit that this community has been built up to a regular attendance of 150, which exceeds that number on the special Sundays when, thanks to the LMS and another charity, we are able to have a professional polyphonic rendition of the great composers of the Renaissance.

In the early days, Fr Andrew was responsible for the Sunday Mass in Oxford (now transferred to the Oratory), and so we invited the Institute of Christ the King and Fr Raul Olazalbal from the Argentine came here in 1999. We then invited the

ST BEDE’S Fraternity of St Peter, who first sent Fr Peter Gee here in May 2000. He was followed by Fr Armand de Malleray, who came here in September 2001 – just after ordination. He in turn was followed in 2004 by Fr Paul Carr.

During this time we had a deacon from Nebraska, James Gordon, and Fr Andrew encouraged Matthew McCarthy, Matthew Goddard and Brendan Gerard in their respective vocation to the FSSP. Fr Goddard came here for pastoral placements in the succeeding summers, and Fr Gerard lived in the parish for a while. Fr Nicholas du Chaxel was the last FSSP priest here, leaving in 2005. Although Fr Emerson offered us a replacement, Fr Thomas Crean OP was already in place.

‘This man will understand’ After almost a quarter of a century of being a bishop, Archbishop Bowen stepped down and was replaced by Archishop Kevin McDonald. At the installation, the former beckoned to Fr Andrew and myself, saying: ‘I just want to tell you that this new man will understand what you are trying to do at St Bede’s.’ I was amazed but deeply touched by his courageous support.

Since then we have been through the happy time of vindication with the motu proprio of Pope Benedict. The Latin Mass community has grown and developed into a viable one within the parish, supporting the bazaar every November and being represented on the parish council by Marie Chang.

The hard work and devotion of Fr Andrew Southwell is largely responsible for this, and it is wonderful to see people of every age and race flocking to this Mass, with many large home school families. An excellent schola sings the chant and they are now progressing into polyphony. There is a large group of servers and several competent MCs. In addition to this, there is a needlework guild, and we hope to revive the regular meetings of the Traditional Family Alliance.

In Advent and Eastertide, we sing Vespers every Sunday, and we have processions in May and June and a very happy All Saints’ children’s costume contest every November. We have our own bank account, charitable status, and hope to revive the newsletter. During every Sunday Mass we hear confessions and have a lively social time in our club afterwards. The community sends young people to the LMS summer school, the Chartres Pilgrimage and we rejoice in several marriages and several seminarians have been nourished and nurtured by this Mass. I believe we were until recently, the only parish in England (outside the SSPX) to have the Old Rite everyday.

In 2012, Fr Andrew moved to Rome to resume his studies, which had been interrupted in his monastic days, and Fr Simon Leworthy and Fr Christopher Andrews OSB (Clear Creek) took the reins – I was able to take a leave of absence in the Middle East in 2013/14. This past February, Fr Simon transferred to Middlesbrough and Fr Christopher returned to the USA. Since then, we have not been able to find a permanent replacement to shepherd our Latin Mass community.

Fr Lukasz Haduch, Fr Pawel Sobol (both from Poland) and myself are trying to continue this noble work of wonderful restoration. We are still assisted by the visits of Fr Andrew and many other international priests. We thank God and Our Blessed Lady that we can provide an oasis where the transmission of the treasure of the Faith and the beauty of the liturgy can actually happen!

Fr Christopher Basden is the parish priest of St Bede’s, Clapham Park.

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SHRINE CHURCHES

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

Why a Shrine?

Special churches for the Extraordinary Form Neil Addison

W

hen the church of Sts Peter, Paul and Philomena (popularly known as ‘the Dome’) was reopened in 2013 as a specialist church for the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, it was designated

by Bishop Mark Davis as a ‘shrine’ church with the specific task of fostering devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. At that time probably not many people paid much attention to its shrine status, but since 2012, St Walburge’s, Preston, has also been designated as a shrine, as has St Mary’s, Warrington. So it is perhaps worth asking why all these specialist Extraordinary Form churches have been designated as shrines.

Under Canon Law, all Catholic churches have to be approved by their local ordinary (bishop) and given a specific status. Most churches are, of course, parish churches serving all Catholics within a specific geographical area, but since that option would not be practical for a specialist Extraordinary Form church the options available are either to designate it as a personal parish or as a shrine.

Personal parishes can be established under Canon 518: ‘by reason of the rite, language, or nationality of the Christian faithful of some territory, or even for some other reason.’ They are rarer in Europe than in North America, where there has been a long tradition of establishing personal parishes for Catholics of the Eastern Rites. On a similar basis, not too far from St Walburge’s, the Bishop of Lancaster has established in Preston a personal parish of St Alphonsa for Catholics of the Syro-Malabar Rite.

The purpose of a personal parish, such as St Alphonsa, is to preserve the distinctive liturgical heritage of Eastern Rite Catholics and ensure that they are able to ‘retain their own rite, cherish it and observe it to the best of their ability’ as laid down in the Vatican Council Decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum.

However, this is not the case with the Extraordinary Form since, as Pope Benedict made clear in Summorum Pontificum, the Extraordinary Form is, in Canon Law terms, a ‘form’ of the single Roman Rite, and therefore it is the common heritage of all Catholics in the West, and not just of a specific group.

For that reason though Extraordinary Form personal parishes can be established, and a number do exist in North America, their creation can be seen as divisive because if a Catholic joins a personal parish then they have in effect left their own geographical parish. Creating Extraordinary Form personal parishes in England and Wales, therefore, would have created a formal and undesirable division between Extraordinary Form and Ordinary Form Catholics.

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The status of a shrine is regulated by the provisions of the Code of Canon Law 1230-1234, which provides a lot of flexibility in how one is designated and operated. For example, at Walsingham the shrine operates completely separately to the Walsingham parish church. At Willesden, by contrast, the shrine church is also the parish church. At Holywell, the shrine does not have a designated church and relies on the local parish church. The unifying principle is that a shrine exists for pilgrimage and to foster a special devotion, or as it is put in Canon 1230 a shrine is: ‘a church or other sacred place to which numerous members of the faithful make pilgrimage for a special reason of piety.’

In simple terms a parish church exists to serve the people of a parish, while a shrine church exists to serve all those who go to it.

That subtle, but important, distinction explains why the ‘shrine option’ has advantages over the ‘personal parish option.’ Though each shrine church has its own regular congregation, the members of those congregations still remain formal members of their own geographical parishes.

Equally, a person who visits one of the shrine churches on an irregular basis – such as myself – is still able to be and to feel a full part of the congregation of that shrine; while in a parish church everyone is either a parishioner or a visitor.

The designation of the three Extraordinary Form churches as shrines has therefore avoided any need to create a formal division between ‘Extraordinary Form parishioners’ and ‘Ordinary Form parishioners.’ In addition, should any of the bishops decide to set up a second Extraordinary Form shrine church in their diocese there would be no need to formally designate a geographical boundary between them, because shrines, unlike parishes, do not have boundaries.

Canon 1232 lays down that a shrine has to have its own specific statute, in effect a constitution, which lays out ‘the purpose (of the shrine), the authority of the rector, and the ownership and administration of goods.’ The drafting of such a statute gives a shrine rights in Canon Law which cannot be arbitrarily interfered with. It also provides a great degree of flexibility for a bishop to decide how a shrine church should operate, and what it can and cannot do. This is particularly important when a shrine church is to be administered by a religious institute, such as the ICKSP or FSSP. When any religious institute is invited into a diocese by a bishop there will be prior negotiations and agreements, so that both the bishop and the institute know in advance what their rights and also their responsibilities are. Where the invitation is to run a shrine church then the statute of the shrine forms part of that process of agreement. That said – and I speak here as a lawyer – the ultimate success of having a diocesan church run by a religious institute depends much more on mutual respect and co-operation than on legal documents.

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CANON LAW

In the case of the Dome and St Walburge’s, the respective bishops have granted their shrines the right to carry out most of the traditional functions of a parish church including baptisms, weddings and funerals, but with reservations so as to avoid conflict with local parishes and, I assume, the same principles will be applied to St Mary’s, Warrington.

When the Dome re-opened back in 2013 I was a bit surprised that the shrine model had been adopted, rather than that of a personal parish. But, having studied the options and seen how these churches operate in practice, I have become a firm believer that the shrine structure has many advantages.

In one sense it does not matter what structure is adopted provided that the churches are there and that they provide the Extraordinary Form Mass. But in a broader sense it does matter.

Every church exists for a purpose and the purpose of a shrine church is to welcome everyone – the occasional attendee, and the infrequent as well as the regular. Whether by accident or by design, Bishop Davies adopted a structure and purpose for the Dome which at its heart makes the Traditional Rite part of the broader Church, and not a sidelined specialism. That surely is to be welcomed.

Hopefully other bishops will decide to establish Extraordinary Form churches and places of worship, and if they designate those as shrines then they will be adopting a proven and successful structure. In law, as in so many other things in life, ‘don’t reinvent the wheel’ is good advice.

Neil Addison is a barrister and intermittent member of the congregation at the shrine church of Sts Peter, Paul and Philomena.

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WARRINGTON

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

The Priory Church of St Mary FSSP in Warrington Paul Waddington

Earlier this year, Archbishop McMahon of Liverpool announced that the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter would be given the care of the church of St Mary, Warrington. In this article, Paul Waddington introduces our readers to this fascinating and beautiful church.

T

he first post-Reformation Catholic church in Warrington was opened in 1772. Dedicated to St Alban, it was located in Bewsey Street, a little to the north of the town centre.

It soon came to be run by Benedictines from Ampleforth Abbey, following a request from the Vicar Apostolic for help in staffing the growing number of churches in the Northern District.

The church was replaced by a larger church, also dedicated to St Alban, which opened in 1823 on the same site. This second church, which was designed by Edward Alcock, was a substantial building and had the appearance of a Nonconformist chapel.

Still in use today, it was enlarged in 1893 by the addition of a sanctuary designed

by Peter Paul Pugin, and was given a new facade in 1909, which transformed its external appearance.

As time passed, even the enlarged church became too small for the expanding parish, and in 1870, Fr John Placid Hall OSB purchased a former cotton mill in Buttermarket Street for £4,000. This was to become the site of St Mary’s Priory, which would serve a working class area, a little to the east of the town centre.

Edward Welby Pugin, eldest son of Augustine Welby Pugin, was appointed as the architect, and construction started in 1875. He designed a church in the Gothic style, built from yellow Pierpoint sandstone, with dressings of red Warrington stone, beneath a continuous roof of Welsh slate. E W Pugin’s plan included a tall spire, although this was never built.

St Mary’s Priory consists of a six bay nave with aisles to north and south, a chancel and two short transepts. The nave was high enough to accommodate clerestory windows.

Curiously, the church was oriented with the altar at the west end, although compass references in this article assume a conventional orientation.

Novel features Edward Pugin incorporated some novel features, which might not have met with his father’s approval. Most unusual is the clerestory fenestration, where the windows have segmental heads, rather than a Gothic arches. Each features a six-petal daisy light mounted in heavy plate tracery. The windows on

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the north side would appear to be unfinished because of the absence of detailed mouldings.

By contrast, the tall three light windows on either side of the chancel are of a conventional ‘Decorated Gothic’ design, and contain stained glass by the Hardman Company. An unusual, but very elegant, feature is the large rose window above the high altar. Here, delicate tracery is arranged so as to pick out a diagonal cross with the six-petal daisy theme filling the spaces.

It is probably this window that influenced Pevsner to describe St Mary’s as one of E W Pugin’s best works.

The arcading is built on slender round columns, which allow relatively good sight lines for congregants in the side aisles.

Above the foliated capitals of the columns nestle roundels containing the busts of angels. The design of the roof is very definitely at variance with A W Pugin’s true principles of Christian architecture.

Although it is made using conventional roof trusses springing from corbels, the spaces between the trusses have been filled with panelling to form a false ceiling, which in turn has been decorated with stencilling. It is not clear which of the Pugin brothers was responsible for this decision. The effect is very pleasing to the modern eye, but probably caused Augustus Pugin to roll over in his grave.

Edward Pugin did not live to see the church completed, the work being taken over by his half brother Peter Paul Pugin, who finished the main structure in 1877, and then went on to work on the internal fittings. His works include the marble pulpit of 1884 and the high altar and reredos made from Portland and Bath stone, which was installed in 1885. The reredos is exceptionally tall and includes a monstrance throne with a spectacular hood, as well as many statues of saints.

Other examples of his work are the choir stalls, the benches, which have unusual iron frames, the marble communion rail with its gates, and the Stations of the Cross carved from Caen stone. He later worked on the Lady Chapel (now dedicated to the English Martyrs) and the Sacred Heart Chapel.

The Tower The priory church of St Mary had to wait until 1907 to get its tower. This again was the work of Peter Paul Pugin, who

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LETTERS

decided not to proceed with the original plan for a spire.

Instead, he raised the height of the tower, finishing it in four spirelets, between which are parapets bearing the words ‘Ave Maria’. The tower was designed to house eight bells cast in the Croydon foundry, which are still in use. In 1923, a war memorial chapel was added to the north side of the chancel, and a school (now demolished) was built.

History was repeated a few years later when it was decided that the parish required another church, and in 1929 the church of St Oswald was opened in Padgate Lane, about a mile or so away. This was also, for many years, served by Benedictines of Ampleforth.

Fine choral music St Mary’s has long had a tradition of fine choral music, which survived the post-Vatican II changes, and translated into the Novus Ordo relatively unscathed.

In fact, the church boasts three choirs, able to sing a range of ancient and modern music. There is a large three manual organ housed in the gallery at the west end, although this is in need of a major overhaul. A much smaller choir organ, positioned in the south transept, was installed in 1995, and is more commonly used nowadays.

In February 2012, it was announced that Ampleforth would be withdrawing from St Mary’s. Some parishioners suggested that the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter should be invited to take over the church, but this idea was rejected at the time. Instead, the parish was merged with that of St Benedict, and later the church of St Oswald was reincorporated into the parish.

With one priest serving three churches, it was only possible to provide one Sunday Mass at St Mary’s, although the parish’s tradition of choral music was retained at this Mass.

Priestly Fraternity of St Peter Advocates of the traditional Mass were delighted when Archbishop Malcolm McMahon announced in July 2015 that the FSSP would be taking over the church, not as a parish church, but as a centre for the celebration of Masses and other liturgies in the usus antiquior within a three church parish.

This happened in October 2015, with Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP moving into the presbytery.

St Mary’s is Grade II Listed, and although there has been some re-ordering to suit Novus Ordo practices, it is fortunate that the work has been carried out with very little detriment to the original design. A forward altar has been installed on a platform in the crossing area, but the communion rail with its gates remains in place, as do the high altar, reredos and choir stalls. Only a few of Peter Paul Pugin’s benches seem to have been sacrificed.

It is wonderful news that the Mass of Ages is now returning to St Mary’s Priory.

Paul Waddington is the LMS Treasurer. All photos are his.

Letters to the Editor A guilty secret Sir, Just a quick word to say how much I look forward to reading Caroline Shaw’s learned studies of religious art in each issue of Mass of Ages quarterly magazine. Both informative and fascinating.

This latest edition – Autumn, 2015 – is another fine example, this time looking at Titian’s The Assumption of the Virgin. One day I hope to read a study of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Yes, my guilty secret – well, one of them anyway! – is reading Dan Brown’s naughty schoolboy ripping yarns, such as The Da Vinci Code!

Jonathan H Brewer, St Columb Major, Cornwall

Upset by Ann Sir, I was very sad and disappointed that Mass of Ages included such an article by Ann Widdecombe (Summer 2015). I like to think that the LMS are offering their followers good reading and useful information. This was neither. I do not want to read what people think about our beloved Holy Mass who have no understanding of history and tradition. For decades we have been excluded from hearing the Holy Mass in the Old Rite and I am most grateful for any church where I can hear Holy Mass even if I am cold. Those of us who have to travel many miles in all weathers are just thankful to the priests who say it and to those who offer their beautiful chapel.

Despite this poor entry in your magazine the interview with our wonderful Bishop O’Toole was a breath of fresh air, full of love and understanding for all his flock. God bless him.

Mary Fincham, Sidmouth, Devon Sir, I was sorry that Ann Widdecombe was cold and uncomfortable when she visited St Cyprian’s chapel (‘First time at an Old Mass’, Mass of Ages, Summer 2015). We know it’s cold. Our hosts do their best for us and we are grateful to them. She said she spoke to the lady who travelled from Sidmouth, she did not complain. The lady who travels by train from Plymouth and then catches a bus for the last leg of the journey carrying our hymn books, I have never heard her complain.

Our Bishop is doing his best for us and we are grateful.

There are things we just have to put up with, remarks from some of the laity and even hostility from some clergy. But what I will not tolerate are the views of Miss Widdecombe coming into my home via Mass of Ages. What was the editor thinking of?

Peter Kiely, Sidmouth, Devon We are grateful to all those who write to us. If you would like to submit a letter or an article for publication, please contact the Editor using the email and / or postal addresses on page 2.

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CALENDAR

In Illo Tempore

F

or forty years, it seemed as if Traditional Catholics were living in a wilderness. In some places, the aridity continues. But with the publication of Summorum Pontificum the words of the Psalmist suddenly appeared to ring true: ‘When the Lord delivered Sion from bondage, it seemed like a dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, on our lips there were songs.’ (Ps 125)

November 1975: Referring to the 1971 Indult granted by Blessed Paul VI, the Chairman, Alfred Marneu, wrote in his Christmas Message for 1975: ‘Regardless of whether the Indult is upheld or not, our absolute and final certainty and justification [in working for the aims of the Society] is enshrined in Quo Primum which grants perpetual privilege to priests to celebrate in the Tridentine rite… [T]here is no documentary proof that Pope Paul has ever abrogated this privilege.’

November 1985: In the LMS Newsletter of November 1985, extracts of the Chairman’s address which had been given at a Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice study weekend were published. During his address, the Chairman, Michael McMahon, had said: ‘I do not think that, today, the spirit of an emotional man or a spiritual man would be, as in the past, affected by a chance encounter with the one true Church were he to find himself observing so-called Catholic worship in our very sadly desecrated churches or cathedrals.

‘However, let us not be totally glum because the day will come when it will happen again. It is just unfortunate, in one sense, that we have been called to live our lives in this very bleak period of history. But we must not forget the Divine promise. Things may indeed get tough. It may be that the visible Church will be reduced to nothing but a few terrified faithful followers in an upper room. But, ultimately, the truth will prevail, and the truth will prevail in beauty because the truth is beautiful.’

November 2010: Writing in the November 2010 edition of Mass of Ages the Secretary, David Forster, reflected on the third anniversary of Summorum Pontificum: ‘One consequence of the Motu Proprio has been an increase in interest in the Traditional liturgy and the number of priests wishing to celebrate it. The recent survey conducted by Paix Liturgique showed that a majority of British Catholics questioned would regard it as normal for both forms of the Mass to be celebrated in their parishes, and two-thirds of those who attend Mass weekly or monthly would attend Traditional celebrations at least once a month.

We are some way off that position! My interpretation is that many... Catholics, even where they are content with the Novus Ordo, realise that it does not fulfil their aspirations, and would like to benefit more frequently from the dignity and spirituality of the Extraordinary Form.’

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VI SUNDAY remaining after EPIPHANY S GERTRUDE V III Cl W S GREGORY THAUMATURGUS B C III Cl W DEDICATION of the BASILICAS of SS PETER § & PAUL § Aps III Cl W S ELIZABETH W III Cl W S FELIX de VALOIS C III Cl W PRESENTATION of the BVM III Cl W XXIV & LAST SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G S CLEMENT I P M III Cl R S JOHN of the CROSS C D III Cl W S CATHERINE V M III Cl R S SYLVESTER Ab III Cl W FERIA IV Cl G ‡ OUR LADY’S SATURDAY IV Cl W † I SUNDAY of ADVENT I Cl V S ANDREW § Ap II Cl R FERIA III Cl V S BIBIANA V M III Cl R S FRANCIS XAVIER C III Cl W JCHP S PETER CHRYSOLOGUS B C D III Cl W SH FERIA III Cl V IH II SUNDAY of ADVENT I Cl V S AMBROSE B C D III Cl W IMMACULATE CONCEPTION of the BVM I Cl W FERIA III Cl V FERIA III Cl V S DAMASUS I P C III Cl W FERIA III Cl V III SUNDAY of ADVENT (Gaudete Sunday) I Cl V/ FERIA III Cl V FERIA III Cl V EMBER DAY II Cl V FERIA II Cl V EMBER DAY II Cl V EMBER DAY II Cl V IV SUNDAY of ADVENT I Cl V S THOMAS § Ap II Cl R FERIA II Cl V FERIA II Cl V VIGIL of the NATIVITY of OLJC I Cl V NATIVITY of OLJC I Cl W S STEPHEN § Protomartyr II Cl R SUNDAY in the OCTAVE of the NATIVITY II Cl W HOLY INNOCENTS MM II Cl R V DAY in the OCTAVE of the NATIVITY II Cl W S THOMAS B M I Cl R VI DAY in the OCTAVE of the NATIVITY II Cl W VII DAY within the OCTAVE of the NATIVITY II Cl W

JANUARY 2016 Fri 1 Sat 2 Sun 3 Mon 4 Tue 5 Wed 6 Thu 7 Fri 8 Sat 9 Sun 10 Mon 11 Tue 12 Wed 13 Thu 14 Fri 15 Sat 16 Sun 17 Mon 18 Tue 19 Wed 20 Thu 21 Fri 22 Sat 23 Sun 24 Mon 25 Tue 26 Wed 27 Thu 28 Fri 29 Sat 30 Sun 31

OCTAVE DAY of the NATIVITY of the LORD I Cl W OUR LADY’S SATURDAY IV Cl W † IH MOST HOLY NAME of JESUS II Cl W FERIA IV Cl W † FERIA IV Cl W † EPIPHANY of the LORD I Cl W s FERIA IV Cl W † JCHP FERIA IV Cl W † OUR LADY’S SATURDAY IV Cl W † HOLY FAMILY JESUS, MARY & JOSEPH § II Cl W FERIA IV Cl W † FERIA IV Cl W † COMMEMORATION of the BAPTISM of OLJC II Cl W S HILARY B C D III Cl W S PAUL the FIRST HERMIT C III Cl W S MARCELLUS I P M III Cl R II SUNDAY after EPIPHANY II Cl G FERIA IV Cl G ‡ FERIA IV Cl G ‡ SS FABIAN P & SEBASTIAN MM III Cl R S AGNES § V M III Cl R SS VINCENT & ANASTASIUS MM III Cl R S RAYMOND of PENAFORT C III Cl W SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY II Cl V CONVERSION of S PAUL Ap III Cl W canon sign S POLYCARP B M III Cl R S JOHN CHRYSOSTOM B C D III Cl W S PETER NOLASCO C III Cl W S FRANCIS de SALES B C D III Cl W S MARTINA V M III Cl R SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY II Cl V

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S IGNATIUS B M III Cl R PURIFICATION of the BVM II Cl W FERIA IV Cl V ‡ S ANDREW CORSINI B C III Cl W JCHP S AGATHA § V M III Cl R SH S TITUS B C III Cl W IH QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY II Cl V S JOHN of MATHA C III Cl W S CYRIL of ALEXANDRIA B C D III Cl W ASH WEDNESDAY I Cl V FERIA III Cl V FERIA III Cl V FERIA III Cl V

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

CROSSWORD

Clues Across 1 One of the gifts of the Holy Ghost (7) 5 Part of the Mass beginning with the ‘Te Igitur’ (5) 8 Edward informally (3) 9 Sir James, leading contemporary British composer and Patron of the LMS (9) 10 It’s good in Spain! (5) 11 Books of records such as school attendance (9) 14 Achieved victory (9) 18 French town near Lille sounds like traditionalists’ Bible! (5) 21 Foretelling the future, perhaps by Divine intention (9) 22 Monmouth town where St David Lewis martyred 1679 (3) 23 See 1 Down 24 Resembling a large monkey (3-4) Clues Down 1 & 23 Acr: Martyr Saint, Feast Day 29 Nov, whose relic (skull) kept by F.I. nuns at Lanherne, Cornwall (8,5) 2 ‘.... .. Memores’, prayer said by the priest immediately after the Consecration (2,4) 3 ‘…….. Pontificum’, Pope Benedict’s moto proprio (8) 4 Decoratively extending cotta or doing up one’s boots! (6) 5 First perpetrator of fratricide (Genesis) (4) 6 ‘…. .. Tangere’, (Touch me not…) Christ’s words to Mary Magdalen, as in, e.g., Titian’s painting (4,2) 7 One of the daily Divine Offices (ninth hour) (4) 12 Member of Jewish sect whose teachings Jesus warned the disciples against (Matt 16) (8) 13 Deploy the aspergillium during ‘the Asperges’ before High Mass (8) 15 State of being stupid (6) 16 ‘O Salutaris ……’, Benediction hymn (6) 17 Burial mounds, especially on O.S. maps (6) 19 ‘…. in Alium’, great Tudor motet by (Catholic) Thomas Tallis (4) 20 ‘Laus Tibi Christi’, ‘Praise be to …., O Christ’ (4)

Corrections & Clarifications

We would like to apologise for not including the answers to the Summer crossword in the last edition. This was due to an editorial oversight. The answers to the Summer crossword, along with the answers to the Autumn crossword, may be found above right.

Alan Frost: © September 2015

ANSWERS: AUTUMN 2015 Across: 1 Columba 5 Cappa 8 Thy 9 Gerontius 10 Celia 11 Lancaster 14 Byzantium 18 Cymru 21 Ballerina 22 Goa 23 Astra 24 Norbert Down: 1 Catacomb 2 Loyola 3 Magdalen 4 Adrian 5 Cana 6 Poirot 7 Apse 12 Armchair 13 Recusant 15 Zealot 16 Ionian 17 Emigre 19 Abba 20 Beda ANSWERS: SUMMER 2015 Across: 1 Reredos 5 Pugin 8 Man 9 Martinmas 10 Green 11 Augustine 14 Et In Terra 18 Coeli (or Caeli) 21 Potential 22 Sir 23 Scrip 24 Audi Nos Down: 1 Ramsgate 2 Ringer 3 Dominant 4 Spring 5 Paix 6 Gemini 7 Nisi 12 Shackled 13 Ex Libris 15 Igitur 16 Regina 17 Reason 19 Opus 20 Knap

Closing Date & Winner

The closing date for the Winter 2015 Crossword is Friday 11 December. The winner of the Autumn Crossword was Mrs M Fraser from Cumbria. She wins a copy of Treasure and Tradition: The Ultimate Guide to the Latin Mass by Lisa Bergman

 -    

-  

 - -

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OPINION

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

A Prophesy for Our Time Our Lady of Good Success and Home-Schooling Mary O’Regan ‘You’re a lesbian,’ hissed my classmate before she scrunched up her nose at me. We were 13 or 14 years of age, and she had been grilling me on ‘how far’ I had ‘gone’. It was not the first time that I’d been labelled ‘frigid’ or my sexuality questioned because I hadn’t let a pimply boy kiss or grope me.

I was not devout and hardly had a prayer life, so it wasn’t for fear of sinning that I didn’t bow to such peer pressure. It was an all girls’ school, and I knew that if I declared myself willing, I would be invited along to meet up with the boys after school. My reason for not yielding to this manipulation was that I had no friends at the school and knew that if I gave in, I would fit in for a time, but I would have given the other girl power over me and next time I’d have to go further to prove mt heterosexuality.

The very same girl called me a lesbian led a two-faced existence. She egged on other young teens to get blind drunk and be the playthings of boys drenched in cheap cologne. Then she put on airs of being very devout before her mother at Mass. The message that I absorbed was that holiness was merely the good mask of the manipulator.

An older girl ended up having a baby and was rewarded with the insult, ‘stupid girl.’ As I said, I wasn’t pious, but it dawned on me there was a wicked chorus of devilish taunting that bullied girls as young as 13.

The only way to avoid being called ‘freak’ or ‘frigid’ was to do as the others did, and the only way to avoid being lectured, ‘you were too stupid to use a condom’, was to take the ‘morning after pill’, or later pay for your baby to be dumped in a clinic bucket. Life has never been worse for kids, I thought to myself.

Still we were arrogantly told that we were so ‘privileged’ to be ‘Celtic Tiger cubs’ and that, ‘life has never been better for kids.’ I never dared answer back, ‘life has never been worse.’

Then some years back, I had a chance encounter with an Irish mammy from Cork who was taking her 15-year-old to London for an abortion. Having first-hand knowledge of the type of peer pressure the pregnant girl had been under, I tried to intervene and persuade them against the abortion. The Irish mammy would not listen to a word. Paying for her grandchild to be obliterated was about covering up bad parenting. She hadn’t thought it very cool to teach her daughter to stand up to sexual pressure and had turned a blind eye to her early binge drinking. I never found out if the girl remembered getting

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pregnant. So, she marched her daughter to the clinic. I remember thinking of the 15-year-old kid who was born in the 1990s, musing that life has never been worse for girls her age.

Now I don’t just think this – I believe it to be true. Four hundred years before that poor 15-year-old girl was born, Our Lady of Good Success warned that children of our times would have an exceptionally soul-rotting time. Appearing to Mother Mariana, Our Lady entrusted her with prophecies concerning my generation (Mother Mariana was a Spanish nun who was an abbess in Quito). Being very precise, Our Lady said that ‘some time after the second half of the 20th century’ Satan would rule almost completely over society, and that his minions ‘will focus principally on the children to sustain the general corruption. Woe to the children of those times!’

Our Lady asked Mother Mariana to offer sacrifices and to pray for the children born during this time in history. Our Lady of Good Success explained why vocations would be scarce: ‘During these unfortunate times, evil will assault childhood innocence. In this way, vocations to the priesthood will be lost, which will be the true calamity.’

Our Lady said that ‘secular education’ would be ‘one reason for the dearth of priestly and religious vocations.’

Young parents that I’ve met at Latin Masses have said to me that they experienced the same taunting of ‘you’re gay’ if they were not sexually active at a young age, and that the reason they home-school is so as not to put their child into the same pressurecooker that they were so badly burned in. Sometimes, young home-schooling parents have a hard time explaining to their parents why they are educating their children at home. Maybe it is telling that the grandparents of the children who are being home-schooled do not always understand – they may have been born in the ’50s and early ’60s, before things got truly as bad as Our Lady prophesied to Mother Mariana when she said: ‘The Devil will glory in dining upon the exquisite delicacy of the hearts of children.’

Hundreds of years before we were born, Our Lady had made sure that a gift of prayers were being offered for us and our peers. There are a number of reasons to be hopeful, for Our Lady of Good Success assured the good and kind-hearted Mother Mariana that, ‘to test this faith and confidence of the just, there will be occasions when everything will seem to be lost and paralysed. This, then, will be the happy beginning of the complete restoration.’ Our Lady of Good Success, pray for us.

Mary O’Regan is an author, blogger and journalist

ISSUE 186 185 - WINTER AUTUMN2015 2015

DO WE STILL BELIEVE IN...?

TAB

Do we still believe in...

Mass Intentions?

No Greater Gift Fr Bede Rowe

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or many people the most interesting thing in the New Rite of Mass is the announcement of the Mass Intention. I always say, ‘I offer this Mass for X, Y or Z’, but I also know priests who avoid it like the plague.

I voice it out loud for a number of reasons. Firstly, because people who have asked to have this Mass offered for a particular intention have sometimes made quite a considerable effort to come to that Mass. Secondly, because it fixes it again in my mind. And, thirdly, because it reminds people that Mass Intentions exist.

Now, in the Old Rite, we do not usually mention out loud the Mass Intention, but the priest should have one.

At this time of year I hope that many Masses are being offered for the repose of the souls of your beloved dead – and, indeed, your not-beloved dead. To pray for the dead is the only act of charity, the only gift, which we can give to those who have died and gone before us.

There is that lovely part in the Dream of Gerontius when the souls in Purgatory can hear the strains of the Requiem Masses being offered for them.

A priest’s Mass Intentions, by and large, come from you. If you do not ask to have Masses said for particular purposes, then we cannot guess – we are not mind readers. We do not know that Aunt Gertrude is ill in hospital, or little Johnny really needs Mass offered for doing his best in his exams. We do not know that your sister’s marriage is really shaky at the moment and could do with all the support it can get. We are Catholics. Our first line of defence, and our first movement of attack, is prayer.

Our instinct to any concern or problem is raising our hearts and minds to God – and the greatest prayer that we have is the prayer of Holy Mass.

Priests need intentions It is heartbreaking for a priest not to have an Intention at Mass. We say our own, of course, but we want to say yours.

Masses can be offered for almost anything – though I did once draw the line at offering it for Starlight Express to win the 2:30 at Newmarket! So ask the priest.

If you want it on a particular day, then he will try to say it on that day, but sometimes that is not possible. If you don’t want it made public, then ask that it be offered as a Private Intention.

If you want a Novena of Masses (nine consecutive days), or a Trentino (30 consecutive Masses for someone who has died) then ask and arrange it. But whatever you do, please do it.

The other reason why it is important is that in most dioceses in England and Wales, the Mass offering is the backbone of the priest’s income. A priest will say Mass for nothing, of course he will, but the offering should be enough to keep him for one day. In England and Wales the recommended amount is about £5 or £10. When I was in France it was €17. I’d split the difference if you can afford it.

To have Mass offered is to apply the infinite merits of the sacrifice of Christ made real once more on the altar for your intention.

There is no greater prayer that you can make, no greater gift that you can give.

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COMMENT

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

Error Has No Rights Did Vatican II change Church teaching on Religious Freedom?

Dr John Newton

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here is perhaps no more controversial document of the Second Vatican Council than Dignitatis Humanae, which has its 50th anniversary in December. But much of the controversy has to do with how the document is read.

It is possible to read it within a hermeneutic of continuity, interpreting it in conformity with the Church’s teaching. It is also possible to apply a hermeneutic of rupture, suggesting potential breaks with the past. But Dignitatis Humanae plainly makes connections with previous teaching.

The key to the Church’s teaching on religious liberty can, perhaps, be found in the first paragraph of Dignitatis Humanae, where it states that: ‘Religious freedom… which men demand as necessary to fulfil their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society.’

But, it is vitally important to note the sentence immediately following where it adds: ‘Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.’ The weight of this phrase needs to be thoroughly digested. Dignitatis Humanae is not looking to change traditional Catholic doctrine, and therefore any reading implying a change in doctrine goes against the grain of the document’s own stated intention.

True Freedom The Council seems to have had in mind the teaching of Pope Leo XIII when it called for freedom, not only for believers but also for everyone. Leo XIII pointed out in Immortale Dei, that true faith can be found if people honestly search for it. Similarly, the Council taught: ‘In all his activity a man is bound to follow his conscience in order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life’ and this is why one is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience or forcibly prevented from doing so (cf Dignitatis Humanae, 3).

The religious freedom that Dignitatis Humanae promotes sees as its aim the truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Dignitatis Humanae teaches that ‘all men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and His Church, and to embrace the truth they come to know, and to hold fast to it’ (Dignitatis Humanae, 3).

Fr Brian W Harrison, writing in Living Tradition, sums up Dignitatis Humanae’s teaching: ‘The natural right to religious freedom is immunity from coercion by government...’

Therefore it is unjust for any human authority to stop believers acting in accordance with their consciences ‘unless such action violates legal norms, based on the objective moral order.’

In many ways, the freedom from coercion described in Dignitatis Humanae has roots in Pope Leo XIII’s Libertas Humana where he teaches that the Church’s only requirement in the form of government a state uses is that ‘they should be constituted without involving wrong to any one, and especially without violating the rights of the Church’ (Libertas Humana, 13). It is the dignity of the individual and the liberty of the Church that Dignitatis Humanae seeks to uphold.

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Error has no Rights But it is frequently advanced that Dignitatis Humanae does indeed provide a license for the propagation of erroneous opinions in matters of religion. In an article in Catholicism and Religious Freedom, Cardinal Avery Dulles points out: ‘As for religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae never affirmed that individuals or groups were entitled to follow or propagate erroneous views… [it merely] recognises the right of such individuals and groups to be free from coercion... It left intact the teaching of the popes on religious toleration.’

Fr Harrison further points out that there is no weight to arguments that Dignitatis Humanae’s teaching conflicts with the traditional doctrinal maxim ‘error has no rights.’ He says Dignitatis Humanae is concerned with the right of persons, not ideas in abstraction. What ‘error has no rights’ means is ‘that error can never be either the object or the foundation of any human right. But [it] doesn’t say that error is, or ever could be, either the object of any human right (i.e., that to which the right entitles us), or the foundation of any human right (i.e., its reason, grounding, or justification).’ Similarly, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that: ‘The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error’ (2108). The new Catechism still teaches that error has no rights.

Church and State Another charge laid against Dignitatis Humanae is that it jettisoned papal teaching that Catholicism should be established as the religion of the state. As Cardinal Avery Dulles comments: ‘The preconciliar magisterium never taught that Catholicism must be established; it condemned only the view that it may never be established’ (see above.)

Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical to the American bishops is notable in this regard. In it he points to the ‘more abundant fruits’ that would come from the Church enjoying ‘the favour of the laws and the patronage of the public authority’, but it is not demanded that the bishops work for the establishment of America as a Catholic state, rather the principle is advanced that the Church should work within secular society to help build it up. The Church’s view seems to have been that while there were great advantages in states embracing Catholicism, the most important thing is that the Faith should flourish.

Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical addressed the concrete realities in which America’s Catholics lived. Similarly Dignitatis Humanae was responding to ‘the signs of the times.’ To properly understand it we should not read it with a suspicious mind, but recognise that it was addressing a new situation.

Dr John Newton’s CTS pamphlet, Religious Freedom Today: The Catholic View is available from all good bookshops and www.acnuk.org/shop

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

LONE VEILER

Quid est Veritas?

The Lone Veiler

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have always been fascinated by Pontius Pilate, and his world-weary question: ‘What is truth?’ As an historical figure, he’s practically invisible, and the historical sources that do exist don’t have a good word to say about him. Not that that means anything, necessarily.

My view is that he was a man of his age: pragmatic. Read any of the Roman historians and you find a fascinating, if somewhat repugnant, world of back scratching patronage, intrigue, duplicity, and spin. Lots and lots of spin.

Every historian was writing for someone, whether it was ‘bigging up’ the father-in-law, while criticising the state of the nation, as Tacitus managed to do for Julius Agricola – and pretty comprehensively too – or Julius Caesar writing about, well, Julius Caesar. The publicity requirements of Ancient Rome were every bit as sophisticated and necessary for the ruling elite as those we see around us today. Bribery, misinformation, spying, and, of course, back and front stabbing, poisoning, and the encouragement to open a vein when the moment called for it, were part and parcel of the Roman ruling experience. Satirists, poets, and playwrights were naturally on hand with the bon mots, pointing out the ridiculous, scurrilous and absurd, and not always getting away with it. Ovid, for whom I must confess I have a soft spot, ended up in the wilderness after crossing the Emperor Augustus. He died there, effectively censored – his works removed from public libraries for an unnamed political misdemeanour.

Infanticide is coming our way Fast forward to now. Where Rome had abortion and infanticide, we have Planned Parenthood and Brook Advisory clinics. Infanticide is coming our way, if it isn’t already here by stealth. As I write, Planned Parenthood in the USA is reeling from the undercover videos taken of its nauseating traffic in baby parts. They are trying damage limitation in desperation after a number of their ‘healthcare professionals’ – see what I mean about double speak? – were filmed talking about the best way to procure whole brains, and various other body parts with minimal damage to the bits the buyers were after.

The ‘truth’ they give to pregnant women, that they remove merely ‘products of conception’, is not their own truth – they know they are ripping up bodies and selling them for profit.

Clients, the buyers of these poor baby cadavers, don’t want to see the truth of fact that what they are experimenting on is a human being, so the hands and feet are taken off prior

to shipping. Where do they honestly think foetal tissue comes from? None so blind as won’t see seems kind of an understatement. The truth contained within these videos is appalling, so appalling it’s certainly easier to ignore it and hope it all goes away, than face it and acknowledge the horror.

As a species we seem rather good at turning aside and looking away from horror, unless it’s some fantasy ‘schlock’ we’ve paid for on a movie channel. It’s selfpreservation to recoil from the unpleasant, isn’t it? Whether it’s the truth about abortion, or the truth about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere, the truth about end of life ‘care’. It’s easier to pretend it all isn’t there after an initial ‘tut tut, isn’t that terrible?’

The mainstream media, who make most of their money from misfortune, are always exceedingly selective with the horror they believe we should be exposed to. They have paymasters too, paymasters with their own agenda, who will push certain causes till they are rainbow in the face, and choose to ignore other news stories because of their agendas.

So, what is truth?

So, what is truth? Whatever is expedient at the time? Whatever makes you the most money? Gets you off the hook? Cosies you up to the richest minorities? Makes you look cool? This is my truth, tell me yours? Lies, damned lies, and don’t get me onto statistics.

We have the same contradictions in our society that Rome had, and Pilate was a part of. Truth, then as now, has a flexibility to mean possibly more than two things at once.

The media certainly has a tendency to be very flexible. When it comes to the media, the Catechism has this to say: ‘The proper exercise of this right [to information] demands that the content of the communication be true and – within the limits set by justice and charity – complete. Further, it should be communicated honestly and properly. This means that in the gathering and... publication of news, the moral law and the legitimate rights and dignity of man should be upheld.’ (286) Spin, where art thou?

Yet Our Lord tells us that He is the way, the truth, and the life. Christ came into the world as a vulnerable baby. The Word, the real Truth, was born into this world. If we focus on Christ, we will always have Truth, even if we won’t be winning any popularity contests.

Now I think I’ll read some Ovid…

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ART & DEVOTION

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

Diego Velázquez, The Immaculate Conception © The National Gallery, London. Bought with the aid of The Art Fund, 1974

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ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

ART & DEVOTION

The Immaculate Conception Caroline Shaw

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n the previous edition we commemorated Our Lady’s Assumption into Heaven. In this issue we celebrate Mary’s Immaculate Conception, with a beautiful image by Velázquez, one of the great artists of the Baroque age.

Our Lady is shown standing on a translucent moon, her hands together in prayer, her eyes downcast and her calm face expressing immense humility and peace. Around her are bright white clouds, and behind her blue cloak shines an aura of golden light. Above her head are 12 silver stars forming a halo.

Below her are an array of symbolic objects, difficult to discern in the shadowy light, including a temple, a ship, a fountain and a cedar tree – these all refer to traditional emblems of Our Lady taken from the Old Testament.

This is one of Velázquez’s earliest known paintings. It was completed while he was living in his native Seville. A few years afterwards, he was to move to Madrid, where he rose steadily to fame, becoming court painter to King Philip IV and one of the most celebrated artists in Europe. The image was painted for the convent church of the Discalced Carmelites in Seville, together with a pendant image, also in the National Gallery, of St John on Patmos. When placed together, the two paintings show St John in the process of writing the Book of Revelation, looking up mid-sentence and gazing at the vision he describes in Revelation (12:1): ‘And there appeared a great sign in Heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’

Prior to the infallible definition in 1870, the doctrine of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception had a long and turbulent history. It originated in England in the 11th century, and was the subject of much debate throughout the Middle Ages. It was most ardently championed by the Franciscans, and supported also by the Carmelites and the Benedictines, and later the Jesuits. However, there were also detractors, most notably the Dominicans and Carthusians; and during the Reformation, the Church – together with the Catholic rulers of Europe – hesitated publicly to support the doctrine for fear of encouraging disunity between Catholics at a time of acute Protestant threat.

Nevertheless, the Council of Trent, while it did not go so far as to proclaim Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception, reiterated the teaching of St Augustine that she was exempt from sin.

Moreover, the emphasis of the Council on the importance of Catholic tradition, alongside scripture, as part of the Church’s teaching, was to have great significance for the defenders of the doctrine.

During the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Immaculate Conception featured frequently in sacred art. At that time, the subject was painted very differently to the way in which Velázquez has depicted it here. Earlier artists chose to represent the Immaculate Conception either by showing the Tree of Jesse or, more commonly, by depicting the meeting of St Anne and St Joachim at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem. The embrace of Mary’s parents, who had been childless for so many years, was a traditional way of picturing Our Lady’s conception.

By the end of the sixteenth century however, and with the start of the Counter-Reformation, this straightforward narrative version of the Immaculate Conception was being largely rejected, as artists sought a more sophisticated and theologically potent way of visualizing the doctrine. They turned to the beautiful words describing the Shulamite woman in the Song of Solomon (4:7): ‘Tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te’, ‘Thou art all beautiful my love, and there is no spot in thee.’ This was no innovation. St Bernard of Clairvaux was the first to apply these lines to Our Lady, and they had been associated with her Immaculate Conception since the 12th century.

Following the Council of Trent, artists commissioned to paint the Immaculate Conception began to depict Our Lady with hair unbound, her hands closed in prayer, surrounded by images from the Old Testament that were seen as references to her – symbols such as the walled garden, the fountain, the tower of ivory, the rose without thorns and the morning star, which also featured in popular litanies of Our Lady.

Velázquez’s painting is very much in the tradition of these images. However, by the time he began his career, artists were already starting to combine the image of the Virgin from the Song of Solomon with the powerful description of the woman from the Book of Revelation, as described by St John. Thus in Velázquez’s image, the Virgin is shown as tota pulchra, her hands together in prayer, her hair unbound, and accompanied

by Old Testament symbols, but she is also conveyed with the Apocalyptic moon under her feet, the sun clothing her with its golden glow, and the crown of 12 stars on her head.

This painting was commissioned at a time when the Church in Spain, and even the King of Spain himself, were urging the papacy to elevate the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception to the status of dogma. Seville was the great centre of the socalled Immaculist movement, and vast public celebrations were organized to stir popular support. There is no doubt that this powerful image, with its strong, simple iconography and beautiful young Virgin, would have played an important role in the promotion of the doctrine at the time.

The figure of Mary, noticeably very young as well as very beautiful, accords almost exactly with the description by Velázquez’s teacher, and later father-in-law, the Sevillian artist Francisco Pacheco. In his widely-read treatise on art, Pacheco he recommended Our Lady be represented ‘in the flower of her youth, 12 or 13 years old, as a most beautiful young girl, with fine and serious eyes, a most perfect nose and mouth and pink cheeks, wearing her most beautiful golden hair loose, in short with as much perfection as human brush could achieve.’

There was a strong belief at this time that one’s spiritual purity was reflected in one’s physical beauty, and Velázquez’s Virgin, so serene, gentle and humble, conveys perfectly her sinless, immaculate nature, in which innocence and purity triumphs over sin and death.

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RICHARD III

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

‘For His Mercy Endureth Forever’ A Solemn Requiem for the Soul of Richard III

© Jeremy Boot

Jeremy Boot

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his year marked a decided interest in the life and death of King Richard III. He died at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, defeated by the pretender Henry Tudor, who was to become Henry VII. This event put paid to the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and York, and saw the Plantagenet kings, of whom Richard was the last, replaced with the new House of Tudor.

Dynastic disputes were not uncommon in the Middle Ages, which makes this period in our history so fascinating. Not unlike politics, when one party replaces another, there is much mudslinging and exaggeration of the former’s shortcomings, so with kings. The Tudors, whose claim to the throne was at best tenuous, wasted no time blackening the name of Richard. Our popular knowledge of him comes through the accounts and chronicles of the time and written histories, as well as Shakespeare’s Richard III. The hunchbacked, bottled spider, liar, plotter, tyrant and usurper of the play owes much more to theatre than to fact, but his audience was Elizabeth I – Shakespeare knew on which side his bread was buttered. In any event, it made a wonderful piece of drama.

By a touch of historical farce, Richard’s long-lost body, known to be somewhere in Leicester, turned up under a council car park in 2012 – on the spot where the Greyfriars church had been before its destruction at the Reformation. So Leicester, enthused by the new find, made much of it, everyone seemingly knowledgeable and hotly discussing it. His body was laid to rest again with ceremony and dignity in what is now the Anglican

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Cathedral. Some argued that he should be laid to rest in York, where he had been in control of much of the north until Edward IV’s death. Leicester won the day however. Many of us thought the Catholic Church should have reburied the dead king, but there was little hope of that.

So Leicester had its week of events with the reburial, a new museum and much interest. There were various religious events, mostly ecumenical. Notably Vespers sung by the Dominicans in Leicester Cathedral, the memorial service, and a Mass celebrated

by Cardinal Nichols at Holy Cross Priory in Leicester. Some suggested that Leicester exploited the event in the name of fame or for commercial reasons, but the atmosphere in the city was not just one of carnival, but also of introspection. Many found their fascination not in the glitz of a past monarch, but rather in deeper questions of the meaning of life, what the events said to them personally, and many found themselves unaccountably moved and even tearful at the whole event, particularly the interment.

It was always intended that there should be some commemoration and Requiem for the King in a Rite familiar to him. Because of the concentration of events earlier in the year and to avoid the accusation of jumping on a bandwagon, it was requested that something should happen nearer the anniversary of Richard’s death. So on 21 August, the eve of the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth Field and of the King’s death, a Solemn Requiem Mass was celebrated in the Dominican Rite (little changed since Richard’s day) at Holy Cross Priory, Leicester, by

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kind permission of the Prior. Indeed, Mass in the Dominican Rite is celebrated there daily, with sung or solemn Masses for great feast days dotted throughout the liturgical year, which is a great joy and privilege.

I will not enthuse, for shortage of space, about the Dominican Rite itself, except to say that in many respects it gives us a unique insight into the Roman liturgy of the 12th and 13th centuries. It is older than the Tridentine form, St Pius V specifically excluding it from his reforms and the Bull Quo Primum, which did not apply to rites over 200 years old – unsurprisingly, perhaps, since he was a Dominican himself. Although differing in liturgical detail from the Tridentine, it remains very familiar in feel, and those not particularly observant in such matters would not balk at the differences. It has its own plainsong and annotation, differing from the more familiar Solesmes editions – a minefield to the unwary singer.

So the Requiem was duly sung Fr Neil Ferguson with a catafalque, draped in black and surrounded by candles. After Mass, the Libera me and absolutions were performed in the Roman Form. The Dominican Requiem is more severe than the Roman. Incense is absent and deacon and sub-deacon do not wear dalmatics. The liturgical colour remains black.

The sermon was also delivered by Fr Ferguson, who outlined the state of European politics in the 15th century, the relevant history in England and how the Bosworth Field defeat for Richard had ended the Plantagenet reign. Henry VII was to be, of course, father to Henry VIII, and he lamented the reign of that monarch, his separation of the Church from Rome which led, as we all know, to the end of Catholic England and all that implied thereafter, including the sorry fate to which we are all heirs.

He pointed out that Richard was popularly seen either as despicable or even in the light of events, as a rehabilitated hero.

Whatever the truth of that, what mattered more was that, like us, he was a sinner and in need of our prayers and how it was particularly fitting that holy mass was being celebrated for him now in this rite with which he would have been familiar in his lifetime.

Many people present found this ceremony particularly moving. It was quite devoid of any spectacle other than the simple beauty of the rite, most of the singing was chant; there was no organ. The sanctuary was unadorned. This was not a showpiece event; it was what was intended: a Requiem Mass for the soul of the departed. Some unfamiliar faces were among the congregation and certainly there were present members of the Richard III Society. The mood was decidedly quiet and contemplative.

Alas, now, even among some members of the Church, the idea that a deceased soul needs prayers for salvation, the doctrine of Purgatory, judgement indeed, seem forgotten or put aside.

Yet prayers and sacrifices are beautiful and practical things. In the lesson for the anniversary of death, the Book of Maccabees reminds us, ‘It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from sins.’ It is a practical, loving, dutiful and even joyful thing for us to do for our loved ones in Purgatory who cannot help themselves.

We will never know for sure how Richard was judged, that is God’s work, not ours. But it was a sobering thought that many of us had at that Mass that a soul could have been waiting even for 530 years for the very action and grace of the Sacrifice of that Mass. Quoniam in aeternum misericordia eius – For His mercy endureth forever. It is never too late.

Let us hope someone remembers us in centuries to come.

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ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

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Traditional Priests’ Support Trust HMRC charitable status ref XR87762 Since 2EE5 we have offered regular fundingB in conA fidenceB to individual priests resident in the UKB who are in need because they adhere to the traditional doctrine and liturgy of the Church and celebrate the Old Rite Mass exclusivelyD These priests need support more than ever nowD Over the last ten years we have helped nine and given out nearly £2EBEEED Please help us to continue this work with a donationB standing order or even a modest legacy in your willD 13 Gladstone Road Headington Oxford OX3 8LL

www.traditional-priests.org.uk

Please pray for the souls of all members who have died recently Requiescant in Pace

Eileen Baguley Fr Alan Blackford Desmond Browne Estella Coomber Jane Crosse Janet Harrop John Hopwood Joan Keenan Anne Lyons Canon Denis McSweeney George Manser Mrs A L Partridge Michael Real Diana Smith 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 2 for contact details.

Jeremy Boot is the LMS Representative for Nottingham (Central)

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WALSINGHAM

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

Come to Our Lady’s Little House

Walsingham and the Jubilee Year of Mercy

© Joseph Shaw

Mgr John Armitage

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arlier this year our Holy Father Pope Francis announced that a Holy Year would take place, beginning on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It would be a Year of Mercy, and call all men and women to reconciliation with God and their neighbours, so that they can be ‘missionaries of mercy’ to others.

Mercy has been described as ‘entering into the chaos of another person’s life.’ The message of Our Lady at Walsingham – ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us’ – is that Jesus became a man, entered into the ordinary everyday events of our lives. We sometimes walk with faith, inspired by the teachings of the Lord and we sometimes depart from this road and experience the chaos of sin and selfishness. It is into this struggle that the Lord enters in his loving mercy, and calls those who would follow him to be merciful to others. The Holy Father writes: ‘We need constantly to contemplate the mystery of mercy.

It is a wellspring of joy, serenity, and peace. Our salvation depends on it. Mercy: the word reveals the very mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. Mercy: the ultimate and supreme act by which God comes to meet us. Mercy: the fundamental law that dwells in the heart of every person who looks sincerely into the eyes of his brothers and sisters on the path of life. Mercy: the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to a hope of being loved forever despite our sinfulness.’

Mercy at Walsingham The National Shrine of Our Lady, being a place of pilgrimage, will be one of the venues where there will be a Holy Year Door. Like all pilgrim sites, visits to Walsingham are often ‘grace filled moments as people discover a path to conversion.’

The Shrine is preparing itself to receive many more pilgrims for the Holy Year, and we are developing resources to be used before, during and after any pilgrimage. The focus will be on the Spiritual and the Corporal Works of Mercy, and a new ‘Stations of Mercy’ will be created.

We are also looking to have a few special features for the Holy Year, which we are working on at the moment. The Holy Year is part of the ongoing work of evangelisation that is at the heart of the life and ministry of the Church.

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Evangelisation is not a programme; but a consequence.

Evangelisation happens when a Christian commits to a relationship with Jesus Christ in prayer, has a reason for their hope because they seek the truth of Jesus Christ in the Word of God, the teaching of the Church and the wisdom of the saints, and has a great heart of service for all especially the poor and marginalised. Such a woman or man will already be evangelising through their life. Blessed Pope Paul VI reflected on this in his encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi, when he wrote: ‘Through their wordless witness they stir up irresistible questions in the hearts of those who see how they live: Why are they like this? Why do they live in this way? What or who is it that inspires them? Why are they living in our midst?

Such a witness is already a silent proclamation of the Good News and a very powerful and effective one.’

Each person’s involvement in the Holy Year is a call to conversion, in order that we might pass on to others the graces that we have been given by the Lord. The National Shrine of Our Lady invites you to Walsingham in the words of Our Lady to Richeldis: ‘O you who are in any way distressed or in need, come to that little house that you have built in Walsingham.’

This year has seen so many wonderful examples of God’s love at work in people’s lives. Thousands of pilgrims regularly make the long journey to Walsingham in all weather: interceding for their loved ones, seeking help and healing in their lives and wisdom and inspiration to discern God’s will as they seek to respond to his loving call. The journey, the prayer, seeking forgiveness through the Sacrament of Penance, the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the penance of walking the Holy Mile, the peace of this ancient holy shrine and the beauty of the setting, help us to focus on the God whose unconditional love is a daily witness to his mercy.

LMS members are always welcome It was a joy to welcome the members of the Latin Mass Society’s Walking Pilgrimage at the end of August. Members will always be welcome.

The vibrant life of the shrine, the growing numbers of pilgrims (we have six new pilgrimages booked for next year), and the numbers of residential pilgrims is growing. Our development proposals are there to ensure that our facilities are ready to serve all who wish to come. Next year we shall be staring our fundraising in earnest – please keep this very specially in your prayers.

We shall also be looking to organise a national tour of the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham to all of the English cathedrals, so watch out for further details.

Please be assured of my prayers for the work of the Latin Mass Society and a daily remembrance in the Novena of Masses at the Shrine.

Mgr John Armitage is the Rector of the National Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham.

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

DIOCESAN DIGEST Mass of Ages quarterly round-up

© Andrew Armstrong

attended. Members may also consider attending the recently established Mass centres at Willesden and St Albans, which deserve our support.

We are still in need of servers. I hope that those who attended October’s Servers Training Day will be able to serve where they are needed.

Westminster (Hertfordshire) Nicandro Porcelli nicandroporcelli@hotmail.co.uk 07920 122014 Hexham and Newcastle Andrew and Jayne Armstrong www.lmshn.blogspot.co.uk

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ince our last report, efforts have continued in the promotion of the Latin Mass. There have been talks about the possibility of bringing the first Friday devotions to St Joseph’s. We will bring you more news as and when things develop.

As always, the need for servers is very much a matter of concern. In light of this, the possibility of organising regular training events for those wishing to learn (or develop) the skills required to serve at the Old Rite is currently being discussed. No level of experience or knowledge of Latin is required, so please don’t be shy in expressing your desire to learn.

All was well this year at Brinkburn (pictured). Music was provided by the Westland Singers and, as always, it was outstanding. Even the summer came back for the day to brighten things up! I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to Fr Rowe, our celebrant, Fr Phillips, deacon, and Fr Brown, sub-deacon. The serving team was provided

by St Joseph’s parish with a new addition provided from Fr Phillip’s parish, serving at his first High Mass. We had a good turnout among the congregation. We have booked next year’s Mass on the second Saturday in September. We hope to see you there next year!

It is with deep regret that we announce the death of Miss Joan Keenan who had been a long time LMS member. We ask that you remember her in your prayers.

Westminster (St James’s, Spanish Place) Roger Wemyss Brooks 020 7224 5323

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unday Mass congregations have continued well and seem to be increasing. Masses are often attended by visitors unfamiliar with the Rite: as we have run out of copies of the missalette to help them follow the Mass, the new LMS Ordinary booklet will be very welcome.

The forthcoming events with Cardinal Burke in November will hopefully also be well

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asses in St Albans on Sunday’s at 5.00pm are attracting people from Hertfordshire and beyond. This has only been there two years but it has helped grow a Latin choir in the parish, thanks to Peter Johnson and the choristers.

We are planning to have a Solemn High Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (see Mass Listings), with new LMS Music Director, Matthew Schellhorn, organ-ising the sung liturgy.

Fr Michael Cullinan has been helping with the monthly Mass at Old Hall Green and his help is appreciated in the area.

We have seen new priests arrive and we hope to engage with them to bring more Mass provision. As the New Year approaches we hope to have more servers in training.

We thank and pray for the bishops and priests in our Diocese who support and help Mass provision.

Westminster (Tyburn Walk) Dylan Parry Sadly, this year’s Tyburn Martyrs’ Walk had to be cancelled at the last minute. We are currently planning next year’s Walk.

Arundel and Brighton Annie Mackie-Savage 01323 411370 amacsav@sky.com www.arundelbrightonlatinmasssociety.blogspot.co.uk

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e are still very lucky in Arundel and Brighton to have a Mass somewhere in the east and south of the Diocese each Sunday. I am profoundly grateful for the priests who make these Masses happen, and to the faithful who assist at them. We now even have a fifth Sunday Mass available, thanks to Fr Michael Clifton at Bethany Chapel. Nothing would make me happier, though, than to list more Masses, and find more servers!

Perhaps it might be an idea if we invited fellow Catholics to come with us to the Masses we attend, to enable the beauty of the Latin Mass to be more widely appreciated?

Sadly, in the summer, we lost a wonderful supporter, Mrs Eileen Baguley. Like many of us, she travelled to Masses whenever she could. Eileen had a marvellously dry wit, and a tremendous faith, and we all miss her. Please pray for her and her husband, Bryan, and their sons.

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY Birmingham (Birmingham City and the Black Country) Louis Maciel louis.maciel@gmail.com 07855 723445 Bernadette Renfrey (Assistant Rep) 0121 386 2589 www.birmingham-lms-rep.blogspot.co.uk

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here are now five priests in the community of the Birmingham Oratory and this has allowed an increased provision of ad hoc Masses, as well as High Masses for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the opening Mass for the 40 Hours Devotion in October, All Souls Day, and other feasts.

Some of the regular weekly Masses were turned into Sung Masses for the feasts of Oratorians St Luigi Scrosoppi, Bl Salvio Huix Mirapleix and the traditional date of the Assumption, which was also celebrated at High Mass on Sunday. There was also a private Mass for the 50th wedding anniversary of LMS members Kenneth Colin and Josephine Mary Tunnicliffe – many congratulations!

The monthly Mass at Maryvale was celebrated in the nearby church of Our Lady of the Assumption in August, rather than the Institute chapel just a few days before the feast. This is the second such occasion the Mass has been held in the parish church.

A couple of the Solihull Masses were moved back a week to the first Friday rather than the last Friday of the month; on one occasion, this was due to the unavailability of the priest and server, and in November, it was to facilitate a High Mass.

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015 Birmingham (Staffordshire North) Alan Frost 01270 768144 alan.jfrost@btinternet.com www.north-staffs-lms.blogspot.co.uk

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ur Masses continue to be mostly celebrated at Our Lady of the Assumption church in the village of Swynnerton, near Stone. Fr Paul Chavasse has been able to restore the fortnightly Saturday morning Low Masses, although the Sunday weekly Mass is also Low as Father’s throat recovery continues to be a slow affair.

However, a recent Saturday morning Mass was a real bonus, as it was the Feast of Our Lady of the Assumption in the Extraordinary Form calendar, being at the church of the Assumption. A photo of the event even featured in the pages of the Catholic Herald.

Alas, there is no new venue for Masses to report, but we continue to be grateful to Fr Anthony Dykes at St Wulstan’s church near Newcastle for Feast Day and First Friday Masses. However, a priest who has recently taken over two quite architecturally outstanding churches in Tunstall and Burslem, Fr Christopher Miller, is keen to celebrate the Traditional Mass in the future.

Birmingham (Coventry and Warwickshire) (Report submitted by Louis Maciel)

Birmingham (Worcester) Margaret Parffrey 01386 750421

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ince the end of a regular Mass in Rugby, there is currently no regular provision of the Extraordinary Form in the whole of Coventry and Warwickshire. You may be interested to know that the recently ordained Fr Mark Higgins of the Southwark Archdiocese celebrated a well-attended Mass at St Joseph the Worker in Coventry over the summer. I was also called upon to help find a priest to preside at a funeral in the area earlier in the year. Despite such encouraging signs of demand, the area still has a vacancy for a Rep. If you feel you have the time to step forward into this role, I would encourage you to do so – I would be more than happy to assist you and have several leads on churches and priests who might be sympathetic to increasing provision of the Old Rite in what is currently an Extraordinary Form desert.

Birmingham (Oxford) Dr Joseph Shaw 01993 812874 joseph.shaw@philosophy.ox.ac.uk www.oxfordlmsrep.blogspot.co.uk

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ur regular Masses continue as usual: please see the Mass listings.

I would be particularly pleased to hear from anyone who would like to join our small chant schola, the Schola Abelis, which supports the Traditional Mass in the Oxford area and introduces the chant to students.

This year there will I hope be one, and probably two, celebrations of Midnight Mass for Christmas in the Oxford area, including one sung, but the details are yet to be confirmed, so please watch this space.

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ith the recent Feast of St Michael the Archangel, our Masses continue at Spetchley.

We would like to offer our thanks to Our Lady of Ransom for her protection and blessings. The first of these blessings being two small but efficient altar boys – our grateful thanks to the congregation who raised cash for cottas and cassocks, and to the family for such treasures. The second blessing being that we have gained a schola, Sancta Joseph from Malvern. Our grateful thanks to Alister Tocher and choir who, by time of publication, will have sung at Spletchly for All Saints – Fr Talbot as celebrant.

Masses continue at Redditch, which are offered by Fr Grynowski who travels from Wolverhampton. We need people and altar servers for this. Fr Lamb continues with Mass on the first Sundays and Friday evenings, and Fr Christopher at Evesham on Tuesdays. However, there is no need for complacency – we all know how easily things can change.

Brentwood Mark Johnson 020 8555 1795 mark.johnson592@gmail.com www.traditioninbrentwood.blogspot.co.uk

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am delighted to inform members of a new monthly Sunday Mass which will be celebrated on the third Sunday of each month at 4.00pm from October 2015. I am most grateful to the parish priest of Our Lady of Canvey and the English Martyrs, Fr Eamonn Power, for granting permission for the Mass and for the willingness of Fr Stewart Foster to celebrate it.

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015 We will be having the annual Sung Requiem Mass at St Patrick’s cemetery chapel in Leytonstone this year on Saturday 28 November at 10.30am. The Mass is offered for the repose of all those at rest in the cemetery and this year it is particularly poignant as a great friend of the Traditional Mass in Brentwood, Fr Denis Hall, sadly died in March 2015. He was buried there with his parents. As parish priest of St Antony of Padua, Forest Gate, Fr Hall gave permission for a weekly Sunday Mass soon after Summorum Pontificum. That Mass was celebrated by Fr Stewart Foster, and is now in Canning Town. Please remember Fr Hall in your prayers: requiescat in pace.

Cardiff Andrew Butcher Cardiff Representative 07905 609770 andrew.butcher@lmscardiff.org.uk www.lmscardiff.org.uk

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lease note that Holy Mass will now only be celebrated in Abergavenny on the first Friday of the month. A Requiem Mass will be celebrated for the deceased members of the LMS in the Archdiocese. Date, time and location to be announced on the website during November. Please check it as often as you can. Cardiff Chaplaincy Masses on the first and third Thursdays of the month have been suspended as Newman Hall are not able to accommodate us at this time, however please stay in contact with me or visit the website for news of when the next Mass is scheduled. Hopefully things will be back to normal before the New Year. Please keep Fr Jones, the Sisters at Nazareth House and all involved in the development of Cardiff Catholic Chaplaincy at Newman Hall in your prayers. Please also keep Dom Antony Tumelty OSB in your prayers at this time. Please continue to support the Masses in the Archdiocese by attending the ones you can. All other Mass times are as scheduled.

Although this is a little premature at the time of writing, I wish you all a happy and holy Christmas and prosperous New Year.

Clifton (Main Reps) Ken and Carol Reis pussyfooters@blueyonder.co.uk 07896 879116 www.lmsclifton.blogspot.co.uk

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n the morning of the Glastonbury Pilgrimage we woke up to low cloud and drizzle. Not promising, as the Lady Chapel at Glastonbury Abbey has no roof! We passed through a heavy rain shower on our journey there but as we approached Glastonbury a watery rainbow appeared in the sky and we took that to be a hopeful sign.

DIOCESAN DIGEST Indeed by the time the Mass took place at 11:00am it had all but stopped raining and at times we glimpsed patches of blue sky. Approximately 40 pilgrims turned up, which included a large number of children, which was lovely to see.

Fr Philip Thomas was the celebrant and Douglas Thurlow the MC. Fr Philip in his homily spoke about the need to pray to Our Lady for help in these difficult times and to evangelise our Christian faith. The Rupert Bevan Singers provided music which was truly amazing.

We would like to thank Fr Finan for allowing us to use his Church and Kim and Maggie who kindly provided us with advice and hospitality. Also the Abbey Trust for the use of the Lady Chapel. Last but not least we would like to thank Fr Philip Thomas for celebrating the Mass and for the support of all the servers.

Hallam (Sheffield and South Yorkshire) Anthony Fitzpatrick 01142 332801 hallamlms@gmail.com www.facebook.com/anthony.fitzpatrick.161

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nce we reach the autumn, the number of Masses usually increases especially during the month of November. This year is no exception. All future dates are shown in the Mass Listings, but I would draw people’s attention to the various Requiem Masses and the Cathedral Mass at which the University of Sheffield Chamber Choir will provide the music.

I would like to thank everyone who made the effort to attend the Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Doncaster. I am pleased to report that there were a very good number of people in attendance, probably over 50, made up of people not only from the parish but from other parts of Doncaster, as well as those who came over from Sheffield.

As a result of the good attendance and the pastoral need to make the Extraordinary Form available to the people of Doncaster, Fr Kieran Fletcher has confirmed that he will offer a monthly Sunday Mass. This will take place on the third Sunday of each month at 3.00pm. The Mass will be offered at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and we offer thanks not only to Fr Fletcher, but also to Fr Elliott – parish priest at Mount Carmel – for allowing us to use the church so freely.

Fr Tomlinson continues to support the provision of the Extraordinary Form, particularly in Sheffield. He offers Mass on the first Sunday of each month, plus a number of additional Masses. There was a Solemn Missa Cantata offered for the Feast of St Theresa (pictured), with music from the Eckington Singers, who, by time of publication, will have provided the music for All Souls Day. They will also sing at our annual Carols and Benediction on Friday 19 December at St Theresa’s, Sheffield.

The Holy Father has announced a Year of Mercy. I would like to hear from members about how they feel we could mark this across the Diocese. Please feel free to drop me a line with any thoughts or suggestions you may have at the email above.

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LMS REPS’ REPORTS

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015 Lancaster Bob and Jane Latin 01524 412987 lancasterlms@gmail.com www.latinmasslancaster.blogspot. co.uk

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t has been an eventful period in the Diocese with a particularly joyous time at St Walburge’s, Preston. Of the 11 priests newly ordained for the ICKSP this summer, two have been posted to this country. Canon Vianney Poucin de Wouilt, from Versailles, joins Canon Altiere at St Walburge’s, and Canon Scott Turner, from the USA, is now at Sts Peter, Paul & Philomena on the Wirral.

the soul of Bishop Wheeler, who was always most generous in granting permission for priests to offer the Old Mass at a time when permission had to be sought to offer the Mass and when many bishops simply refused. I hope that there will be a good turnout for this Mass. It would be good to show the authorities at the Cathedral that we don’t just turn out for the monthly third Sunday Masses there at 8.00am.

Please note that there will be no Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes, Leeds on 14 November as the times would clash.

Liverpool Jim Pennington 0151 426 0361 pennington893btinternet.com

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We were delighted to be able to attend the Pontifical Low Mass celebrated at St Walburge’s in September by Bishop Michael Campbell, who also confirmed 6 adults and 20 young people (pictured). Shortly before this, Bishop Campbell had paid a visit to the Institute’s Seminary at Gricigliano where he celebrated Mass for the Community. On Remembrance Sunday, 8 November, at 6.00pm, Bishop Campbell will celebrate another Pontifical Low Mass at Our Lady and St Joseph’s, Carlisle. Deo gratias.

From 30 November to 8 December there will be a Novena of the Immaculate Conception with a sermon each day in honour of Our Lady by different guest preachers, followed by Benediction at 6.00pm (except Saturday 5 December at 5.00pm).

The final sermon, on Monday 7 December, will be given by Bishop Campbell.

In Carlisle, apart from the regular Sunday evening, there will be Masses for the Epiphany, the Conversion of St Paul, Candlemas, Ash Wednesday and the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Please see the Mass Listings for all the times. Also, please note that some of these are early in the morning, not in the evening!

At the Cathedral we continue with our monthly Mass offered

by Canon Ruscillo. It would be nice to have a few more people attend so if you haven’t been before please do come along.

Leeds Neil Walker lmsleeds@gmail.com www. lmsleeds.blogspot.co.uk

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aturday 14 November 2015 at St Anne’s Cathedral, Great George Street, Leeds at 4.00pm will see a novel event. For the first time in many years there is to be a Solemn High Mass of Requiem in the presence of his Lordship Marcus Stock, the Bishop of Leeds. The Mass itself will be for the repose of

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he LMS-organised Mass at St Anthony’s, Scotland Road, continues to be quite wellattended, with congregations of 25 to 40.

Thanks to the unfailing help of diocesan priests and priests of the ICKSP, we have little difficulty in assuring celebrants.

In December, Archbishop McMahon will be conducting his parish visitation to St Anthony’s, and will be present at our Mass, which will be a Missa Cantata.

Fr Riley continues his occasional Old Rite Masses at his church of the Holy Cross and St Helen, in St Helens town centre.

Fr Wood also continues with occasional Old Rite Masses at Our Lady’s, Lydiate, on the feasts of St Michael and St Teresa of Avila. He also intends to offer Midnight Mass at Christmas, and on the feasts of the Circumcision and Epiphany. Details of these and other Masses in the Archdiocese can be found in the Mass Listings and on the LMS website.

The Masses in both of these churches do appear so far to be quite popular with the local parishioners; indeed, more so than with our members, most of whom are clustered around Liverpool city. Our Lady’s is somewhat remote and not as accessible by public transport, but it is worth a visit if you can to this beautiful church for Mass offered by a devout priest who has long been a good friend to the Old Mass. Holy Cross, on the other hand, is very accessible and is also a largely unspoiled and pleasing church.

We look forward to the Fraternity of St Peter’s inaugural Solemn Mass in the presence of Archbishop McMahon at St Mary’s, Warrington, on Saturday 21 November at 12 noon.

Menevia Tom & Elaine Sharpling 01239 710411 Tom.sharpling@btinternet.com

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t has been an eventful time in Menevia with some significant achievements and challenges.

Firstly, the LMS Pilgrimage to the National Shrine of Wales, Our Lady of the Taper, Cardigan, took place after a break of some years. We were delighted to be welcomed by the Shrine Rector, Fr Philip Harries, and, of course, indebted to Fr Jason Jones, who led the pilgrimage.

The Feast was the Immaculate Heart of Mary and a good number of people made the journey to Cardigan. The Newcastle Emlyn Schola sang the propers and the Cum Jubilo Mass setting, together with motets and hymns. The pilgrimage opened with the lighting of the taper in the hand of Our Lady and reminded us all of the time that Pope Benedict did the very same when

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015 the statue travelled to London for the papal visit five years ago.

Following Holy Mass, there was time to share cake and tea before we returned to the church for Rosary and Benediction.

Sadly, one of the challenges has been that the Masses at St Joseph’s Cathedral, Swansea, have come to an end due to some priest moves. We would like to thank Fr Burke for his time at the Cathedral and wish him well in his new parish.

However, we look forward to the Mass schedule at Sacred Heart, Morriston, for November and Advent, so please check the link to Menevia from the LMS website or send us an email for details of the Mass times. You will receive a very warm welcome to Wales!

FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY Northampton (North Northamptonshire, including Nottingham Diocese: Leicestershire and Rutland) Paul Beardsmore 01858 434037 pbeardsmore@btinternet.com www.latinmasslnr.co.uk

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r Byrne at Corby offered Mass on the Feast of the Assumption, and continues with the regular Saturday morning Mass at St Brendan’s.

Fr Byrne was also the celebrant for the Solemn Requiem for Canon Denis McSweeney at Northampton Cathedral on 5 August. Canon McSweeney, latterly at Flitwick in the south of the Diocese, had been an ardent supporter of the Old Rite for many years, and was a former dean of the Cathedral, which was crowded for the funeral Mass. Fr Byrne was assisted by clergy from the Birmingham Oratory.

Photo: Author’s Collection

Northampton (Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire) Eric Friar 01296 482146 erichafriar@gmail.com

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LMS Pilgrimage to the National Shrine of Wales: Fr Jones, Corey and Seamus

Middlesbrough Paul Waddington 01757 638027 paul@gooleboathouse.co.uk www.latinmassmiddlesbrough.blogspot. co.uk

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he weekly Sunday Masses at St Wilfrid’s church, York, and also at the Sacred Heart church, Redcar, continue. The Redcar Mass, which is a Low Mass, and is celebrated by Mgr John Heslin, has a modest congregation, and I would be grateful for assistance with promoting it, as I am not able to attend it myself. During the summer months it has been at 6.00pm, but Mgr Heslin proposes that it reverts to 11.30am for the winter.

The congregation at the York Mass, which is a Missa Cantata at 12 noon every Sunday, continues to grow, and attracts new faces every week. The recruitment of choral scholars at the beginning of October, has enabled the introduction of polyphonic Mass settings, with a wide variety of composers represented. This is expected to increase the size of the congregation further, as it becomes better known in the area.

The monthly Wednesday evening Masses at the church of St Charles, Hull, are also doing well, with a consistent congregation of around 30. It is normally a Low Mass celebrated by Fr Peter Mulholland, but in August Fr Leworthy offered a Missa Cantata with the Rudgate Singers providing the music.

I am expecting further developments at a rural location in the East Riding of Yorkshire, but, at the time of writing, the details are not yet available. Information about this and other news will be posted on the website, Latin Mass Society in the RC Diocese of Middlesbrough, as it becomes available.

he 8.00am weekly Sunday Mass and Masses on Holy Days of Obligation continue at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, under the care of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter. The monthly third Friday Mass at St Francis of Assisi, Shefford at 7.30pm continues thanks to the enthusiasm of Canon Bennie Noonan and the commitment of Fr Gerard Byrne.

As noted above, Canon Dennis McSweeney died peacefully at home in Flitwick on 21 July and his funeral Mass was celebrated in the Old Rite at the Cathedral in Northampton by Fr Gerard Byrne on 5 August.

The weekly Sunday Mass at Christ the King church, Bedford, started on 16 August, and has continued uninterrupted. Fr Patrick Hutton, the parish priest, has been very welcoming, and for the past few weeks the congregation has been between 40 and 50 strong.

Many thanks to Justin Bozzino, Eric Caudle, and the Di Falco and Grimer families for all their support in serving and singing at our Masses.

Nottingham (Central) Jeremy Boot 0115 9131592 jeremy.boot2@gmail.com

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n previous reports I have mentioned the possibility of combining all Masses in the Nottingham area into one time and venue. I also explained that this seemingly easy exercise was anything but. I therefore sent letters to members affected and received a number of replies by different means – for which I thank them. Following this, we had a most useful meeting with our celebrants and agreed to make further enquiries in the Nottingham area. We also agreed we should not move from our current venues until any change was consolidated and safe.

(Please see the Mass Listings.)

The Mass at Good Shepherd fulfils the obligation for Sunday, but those of a delicate conscience in such matters are quite free to attend another Sunday Mass if they wish.

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DIOCESAN DIGEST Those unable to attend Sunday Masses may wish to make a special effort to attend the Cathedral Mass monthly. Some seemed to think this was exclusively for Juventutem members, but this is absolutely not the case: all are welcome.

It is worth noting that Summorum Pontificum not only applies to Holy Mass but to all the sacraments. It was a joyful occasion to celebrate the baptism in the Traditional Rite of baby Juliet, daughter of Robert O’Farrell, our esteemed organist, at the Good Shepherd church some little while ago, with Charlotte his wife and their family.

I make the usual thanks to all, clerical and lay, who make these Masses and events possible. I will report further on Mass times and places as they develop.

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015 1960s. The Mass was celebrated by Fr Neil Ferguson, Sub-Prior of Holy Cross, assisted by Fr Thomas Crean OP and Fr John Cahill, our Midlands chaplain (see pages 24-25.)

Meanwhile the usual Sunday and weekday Masses have continued at Holy Cross, Friday Masses at St Joseph’s, Oakham, and Saturday Masses at St Peter’s, Leicester. On the Feast of the Holy Rosary Fr Paul Gillham IC offered Mass at St Mary’s, Loughborough, and on the same day there was a Sung Mass at Holy Cross Priory.

As usual we remain indebted to the clergy who celebrate these Masses, and also to the servers and singers who support the liturgy with unwearied enthusiasm.

Nottingham (Lincolnshire) Mike Carroll www.lmslincolnshire.blogspot.com www.lincolnshiremartyrs.blogspot.co.uk

Portsmouth (Isle of Wight) Peter Clarke 01983 566740 07790892592 pclarke.wight@tiscali.co.uk

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t is ‘all change’ for the Latin Mass in Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire now continues to have one regular Sunday Latin Mass at St Bernadette, Scunthorpe, with Low Mass at 3.00pm. Check the LMS Lincolnshire websites (above) for updates regarding the time. There is also a location map on the website, but for those with satnavs the new postcode is DN16 2RS. There has also been a change of priest at Holy Rood, Market Rasen, but I can now officially confirm that the Latin Mass will continue on an intermittent basis at this church. Check the Lincolnshire website for updates, but we will be giving a little time for the new priest to settle in to his new parish.

With regard to the future of the Traditional Latin Mass in Lincolnshire, requests have gone in to the diocese for another permanent Mass in the county. I will of course inform members when we have any news. It is a case of ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, but things are continuing to move forward.

Nottingham South (Leicestershire and Rutland) Paul Beardsmore

r Anthony Glaysher, parish priest of Ryde, was pleased to have Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP here for a few days in September. On the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, while the Holy Rosary was recited and the Blessed Sacrament exposed at the Lady Chapel, Fr Armand heard Confessions, before offering the midday Mass.

In the evening, both priests were pleased to visit the Marian Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Immaculate at Gosport, where they participated in the torchlight procession in honour of Our Lady.

Fr Armand asked for prayers to invoke God’s blessing on his new mission in the north. We were pleased that one of Father’s last visits before departing to Warrington was here to the Isle of Wight, where he has been a regular visitor offering Mass, giving days of recollection, hearing Confessions and giving support in particular to Fr Glaysher, who has a close affiliation with the FSSP and has always appreciated the support of their priests. It is almost 15 years since Fr Armand’s first visit to Ryde and he leaves for the north with our prayers and good wishes.

We were also pleased to welcome Fr Richard Duncan from the Birmingham Oratory. As well as offering Mass in St Mary’s, Father gave an interesting talk on ‘Newman – priest and Oratorian.’

During the summer there was an increasing number of LMS members visiting the Island for a day visit. Why not combine a day visit on a Tuesday or Thursday and include a Latin Extraordinary Form Mass at 12 noon with a guided tour of our beautiful Victorian church in Ryde. To arrange this contact me at the above number(s).

© John Aron

Portsmouth (Reading and Portsmouth North) Adrian Dulston 01491 682909 adrian.dulston btinternet.com

August began with a Sung Mass for the Feast of St Dominic at Holy Cross Priory, Leicester, and was followed by High Mass at St Peter’s in the same city for the Assumption of Our Lady (pictured). Jeremy Boot has written separately in this issue about the Solemn Requiem for Richard III held on 21 August – as far as I am aware the first Solemn Requiem Mass celebrated in the Dominican Rite in this country since the reformation of the

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r de Malaray has now left St William’s for Warrington, although there is a little delay in him beginning his new ministry. FSSP priest Fr Ian Verrier has begun his first parish experience here and its heartening to see a young priest offering the Old Mass, delivering fresh challenging sermons.

We also currently have a FSSP seminarian assisting the FSSP priests. Let us not forget to mention the new Parish priest Fr Goddard who needs our prayers. Currently, the FSSP have not gained official parish status under Bishop Egan, but are in the

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Portsmouth (Portsmouth and Winchester) Peter Cullinane 023 9247 1324 pmcullinane@hotmail.com

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he best news this quarter has been the growth of Gosport parish, placed in the care of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate by Bishop Philip Egan. I mentioned this new venture in the last edition when it had just started and I am pleased to say that the Saturday morning Mass draws about 40 mainly local people on average, many or even most of whom will not have experienced an Old Rite Mass before.

By kindness of the Friars, they are well provided for with texts of the Propers and the instructions after Mass in the hall.

St Mary’s is a typical 19th century Catholic church right on the pedestrianised High Street, but unlike many buildings of that era, is surprisingly and wonderfully light inside thanks to a spacious side passageway. This forms a worthy background to an extremely well celebrated liturgy.

St John’s Cathedral continues to draw a congregation of about three dozen and Winchester has started to attract several students from Southampton University.

Sadly Mrs Jane Crosse, a long-standing regular at Winchester, died in August and a few LMS members were able to attend her funeral in Lyndhurst, celebrated by Canon Alan Griffiths. I also heard only lately that one of our Winchester regulars, George Manse, who had a small engineering business, died earlier this year in a tragic workshop accident – may they both rest in peace.

Finally, on an inspiring academic note, Harry, now turned 13 and our youngest altar server whom I mentioned in an earlier issue, together with his brother a year older, achieved A* in GCSE Latin this summer.

As you will appreciate, this is several years early... their mother thinks it might have something to do with their attendance each Sunday at the Old Rite Mass in the Cathedral. Well done boys!

Shrewsbury Bill Quirk (Assistant Rep)

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he Diocese of Shrewsbury consists of two counties, Shropshire and Cheshire. In the distant past, I looked after both until old age set in. Shropshire has few Catholics, few churches, and fewer priests, but at one time we had a monthly Sunday Mass in three churches and quite frequent weekday Masses here in Shrewsbury. There are very few members in Shropshire, which makes expansion to other churches unlikely.

The regular provision of Sunday Mass (and the provision of copies of Mass of Ages) does not encourage applications for membership. In fact, I think the reverse applies. The fact that the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is part of the parish schedule rather inhibits active ‘proselytism.’

Southwark (St George’s Cathedral) Pierre du Quesnay Kirk 07989 715494 pierre.d.kirk@gmail.com

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am privileged to live in the Cathedral parish of St George’s, Southwark, where I was very pleased to hear the Mass of the Assumption.

This was a Missa Cantata, kindly sung by Fr Gabriel Diaz Patri on the Cathedral’s high altar. We are particularly grateful to the Cathedral Dean and other priests for providing every conceivable hospitality, including the provision of their best gold gothic vestments. And, I am told, even much welcomed cups of tea were provided for the early morning choir practice.

Members of the choir, Cantus Magnus, directed by the recently appointed LMS Director of Music, Matthew Schellhorn, made good use of our Cathedral’s wonderful acoustics. It was also particularly pleasing to see so very many young families assisting. The consensus re numbers attending was put on the plus side of 200.

It is anticipated that a Mass of similar solemnity will be offered in the Cathedral in the near future.

Southwark (St Mary’s, Chislehurst) Gerard Hanratty piersdarcy@yahoo.com

Photo: Gerard Hanratty

process of quasi-parish status albeit under consultation.

Do consult www.facebook.com/fssp.england for the latest Holy Mass times and relevant news. Also, please note the change in Mass time for Wednesdays to 12 noon.

I am still promoting Latin Masses at English Martyrs church, Didco, which is generously offered by Fr Phillip Pennington Harris. He is currently offering Holy Masses on various Holy Days and Fridays. Please get in touch with him if you are interested. Also, keep you eye on www.lmsreading.wordpress. com for updates.

REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

Fr Briggs, the parish priest, celebrating Mass in Old Rite for the Anniversary of the Consecration of the Church.

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t Mary’s, Chislehurst, has been a venue for the Latin Mass for some time. This is due to the untiring devotion of Fr Charles Briggs, who is well known to ‘Traddies’ in the south east of England. The church itself is historically interesting as it was once the burial place of the Emperor Napoleon III and the Prince Imperial. The mausoleum chapel is on the left hand side of the building, where it sits rather uncomfortably with its surroundings – Imperial French eagles don’t blend in with rustic Kent particularly well. More importantly, Michael Davies is buried in the churchyard. He needs no introduction from me.

I’m pleased to say that the popularity of the Latin Mass is increasing within the parish: as is its frequency. We now enjoy the Old Rite, on Sunday, every two weeks and every Friday.

Recently, the parish celebrated the anniversary of the consecration of the church in appropriate style. The LMS Director of Music, Matthew Schellhorn, conducted a most professional performance of Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli.

The church was packed with lots of fresh faces. Mass was followed by light refreshments in the parish room and a dance in the village hall. A good time was had by all.

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Southwark (Kent) Marygold Turner 01580 291372

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ur main event recently was our Missa Cantata at Snave Church on Romney Marsh (see item on page 5.) We also had the baptism of Greg and Katya Grimer’s sixth child, James, on Sunday 11 October at Ashford. Fr Andrew Southwell flew from Rome especially for the occasion.

Canon Hudson has invited me to Brussels for the opening of the new part of his school, at which Cardinal Burke will officiate.

What a huge success he has made of this over-subscribed English school.

We shall have Mass here in Headcorn on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception at 12 noon. Mass on Christmas Day will be at 8.30am. Again, on the Epiphany we shall have a Mass at 12 noon at Headcorn. We thank Fr Michael Woodgate for his invaluable help.

Significant alterations and additions were made to the church in 1957, and then again in 1966.

During our pilgrimage, we venerated the relics of local martyr, St Richard Gwyn (c 1535-1584). A shrine to St Richard commemorates the local teacher, husband and father who was martyred in Wrexham’s Beast Market in an age of religious intolerance.

The pilgrimage High Mass (pictured) was celebrated by Fr Mark Kirby, Prior of the Benedictine Priory of Silverstream in Éire. He was assisted by Abbé Cosme Montjean of the ICKSP, who was deacon, and seminarian Anthony Dorsa of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, was sub-deacon.

There were about 60 assisting at Mass. After a short lunch and interlude, a good number remained for veneration of the relic of St Richard and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament after.

Meanwhile, all other Masses took place as planned, with Fr Francis Maple OFMCap singing the Missa Cantata at Holywell in September in place of Fr Francis Doyle, who was on a well-earned holiday. I am very grateful to Fr Maple.

Wrexham Kevin Jones www.lmswrexham.weebly.com twitter.com/LMSWrexham lms.wrexham@outlook.com 01244 674011 / 07803 248170

 --    -

 

© Michael Ford/Wikipedia

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 - -

© Joseph Shaw

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he Latin Mass Society made a welcome return to the Cathedral church of Our Lady of Sorrows on 1 August, when St Catherine’s Summer School and the Society held a joint pilgrimage.

A Gothic Revival church, designed by Edwin Welby Pugin (son of ‘A W’), it was built during the 1850s and completed in 1857.

It was never intended to be a Cathedral and was designed as a parish church. Menevia had been erected as a diocese in 1898

by Pope Leo XIII, and the church was chosen as the episcopal seat. It was consecrated a pro-cathedral for the original Diocese of Menevia on 7 November 1907, 50 years after its completion.

In 1987, Menevia was spilt by a decree of Pope St John Paul II, and the smaller Diocese of Wrexham was created. Wrexham takes in the Northern part of Wales – Flintshire, Conwy, Gwynedd, Denbighshire, Anglesey and the north Powys.

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roman correspondent

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‘There is a real change taking place’ An Exclusive Interview with Dom Cassian Folsom Alberto Carosa

An interview with Dom Cassian Folsom, prior of the ‘Italian Fontgombault’, the Benedictine monastery in Norcia, birthplace of St Benedict, the father and patron of Christian Europe.

Photo: YouTube

The author of this column was among the participants in the first Italian national Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage in early July, which could be roughly described as a sort of an Italian off-shoot of the annual international pilgrimage organised by the Summorum Pontificum International Coordination Committee CISP in honour and commemoration of the motu proprio liberalising the pre-Vatican II liturgy.

This three-day pilgrimage took place in Norcia and was held in conjunction with the monks of the local Benedictine monastery, who so generously provided all possible support, not only in terms of religious celebrations but also logistics, including even some accommodation. Their Benedictine abbey in Norcia, which can be regarded as the Italian equivalent of Fontgombault and Le Barroux in France, is led by its US born superior, Fr Cassian Folsom OSB, who has managed to revive a branch of the Order according to the traditional rule – which implies the celebration of traditional rites. The prominent role played by Dom Cassian and his monks in the promotion of traditional liturgy may not be underestimated, as evidenced among other things by the fact he is a regular attendee, either as keynote speaker or guest of honour, at relevant symposia and conferences around the world.

On the occasion of the above pilgrimage, Dom Cassian graciously agreed to speak with me about the most recent trends and developments in the traditional minded realm.

You are on record for often being a keynote speaker and/ or special guest at conferences and symposia on the Traditional Liturgy. Can you give some latest examples of this?

At the annual Summorum Pontificum academic conference in Rome in mid-June 2015 I chose to deal with one phrase from the motu proprio where Pope Benedict says that, with his very decisive action to re-establishing the Old Rite, there are now two

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usages of the one Roman Rite which constitute one law of belief, not two. And I was wrestling with that, trying to understand how you could have two laws of prayer, with one law of belief.

It goes back to a 5th century phrase, legem credendi statuat lex orandi, which comes from the Indiculus, that’s the name of the work, of Prosper of Aquitaine. He was the secretary of Pope St Leo the Great when there was the controversy was over grace.

Anyway, I talked on that theological problem and wrestled a little bit with that, and I hope I came up with the solution.

And what is the solution?

Well, it may be a bit too long to elaborate on this in a brief interview. It took me half an hour to explain it, but I can give a little summary here. When we talk about faith, there are two levels. One is our ordinary experience of faith, our prayer, intuitions about the presence of God, and so on. There is another level of defined doctrine. This distinction is important to me, because our liturgical practices cannot go against defined doctrine. Two different forms of the Mass can lead to different experiences of faith, different spiritualities, different anthropological bases. In fact, the two Missals do differ in that way, but they can’t… so there are two laws of faith in that sense, in the broad sense of faith, but in the carefully defined, more specific sense of defined doctrine, those two forms have to conform to the one law of faith, which is defined doctrine.

Those are the distinctions I was trying to make.

You went also to the Sacra Liturgia conference in New York in early June. What can you tell us about that?

Well, I was just there for fun and I did not give a talk. What I can say is that I was really impressed by the enormous energy and enthusiasm among young people, especially young priests and seminarians from around the world. I was very edified by that. There is a real change taking place. Unfortunately, what you often have in many dioceses is a generation gap within the clergy. The young clergy being enthusiastic and orthodox, and those formed in the ‘1968 generation’ are somewhat problematic – this was quite in evidence in the Sacra Liturgia conference.

Problematic in what sense?

Because the young people were full on enthusiasm, but also had the sense that they have been cheated, that the riches of the tradition were not shown to them, and they had to discover it themselves, and that certain segments of the Catholic population tried to hide it from them. So, that’s an interesting phenomenon.

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

DOM CASSIAN FOLSOM

Possibly leading to some sort of revenge?

Well, I hope not. I think it’s normal for young people to be impatient and to want to change the world. That’s part of the wonderful energy of the young. But they also have to learn to be patient. And the ‘1968 generation’ that I spoke of, perhaps harshly, they were formed in a revolutionary age and so you have to understand them too. If they see that everything they worked for is becoming undone, they are bound to be unhappy. So, from the human point of view I think we have to understand these persons, and why they’re so upset.

A comprehension that at times seems lacking in certain traditional quarters…

It’s true. There are many elements of the Traditional movement, if I can put it that way, that are somewhat sharp and even hostile. You can understand that, because people have been pushed into a corner for many years. But you gain more by honey than by vinegar.

You are on record for having called Pope Benedict a genius for his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum.

Yes, I said he is a genius in the way he presented the motu proprio as allowing the coexistence of two rather different

usages. But he has a long-term vision of things. He knows that if you impose something, it’s not going to take firm root.

In the past, he has emphasised the organic growth of the liturgy, the continuity with the past, and therefore he has sown the seeds, as it were, of the future reconciliation. But he knows you can’t rush it, and he won’t see it, and probably I won’t see it either. Because these things take time, one generation is too short a time. Just like building a cathedral in the Middle Ages – it took three generations to build one.

Well, it takes three generations to reconcile the liturgical forms, too. So we have to be patient, although it is difficult to be patient.

And what is your congregation’s position on this process of reconciliation?

We try to act as a bridge in this monastery. That’s why we celebrate both forms of the Mass. The conventual Mass is always in the Extraordinary Form, but we help out in a parish near Norcia on weekends and on Sundays, in the Ordinary Form, hoping that by giving an example of the Novus Ordo celebrated well, we can move closer to some kind of coherent liturgical life.

First Juventutem Social Weekend

Y

oung Traditionalists converged on Alton Castle in August for the first ever Juventutem UK social weekend, held at the Staffordshire Retreat Centre. The weekend consisted of go-karting, indoor rock-climbing and Traditional Liturgy. It was the first Juventutem social weekend in the UK, and possibly the first in the world.

We kicked off with a group meal on the Friday evening after which we said the Holy Rosary, then chatted and got to know each other.

On Saturday, after a cooked breakfast, we made our way to gokarting where overnight rain had made the track a little slippery.

This made cornering fun and increased the number of crashes!

Corinna Bruce got first place for the most number of laps.

After refuelling for lunch, we headed for indoor rock climbing where we were joined by Canon Tanner from the ICKSP. After several hours climbing and getting a few blisters we headed back to Alton Castle where Canon Tanner celebrated Low Mass. Then, after an Italian-themed dinner, Canon Tanner, who had been a priest for only six weeks, gave a wonderful talk on humility and

on his conversion to the faith. We finished off the evening with the Holy Rosary and a quiz.

On Sunday, the Canon gave first blessings after breakfast, then we went on a walk along the old railway line before going for lunch at a local farm shop.

Everyone had a wonderful time and it was great that Traditional Catholics from around the UK were able to meet each other and try new things.

One of the highlights for me was that a young woman who came to the event had never been to an Old Rite Mass before.

Hannah, from London, said she discovered how prayerful and beautiful the Old Rite is. She wants to come to the regular Juventutem Masses in London and to meet more like-minded young people.

Special thanks to Canon Tanner for his time, and to the Latin Mass Society and the FFSP for their help and to Alton Castle for having us.

I’m looking at holding another Juventutem Social Weekend around Easter 2016. Next time we might try white-water rafting, caving or horse-riding. If you are interested in attending a Juventutem social weekend, please contact me at johnaron@ hotmail.com

© John Aron

© John Aron

John Aron

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JUVENTUTEM

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

Juventutem: The London Chapter Helping the young strive towards holiness

J

uventutem was established 10 years ago this year, following the World Youth Day at Cologne. Since then it has grown to become a large and significant youth movement on an international scale. It is, by its nature, quite a loose set up.

Affiliation is easily achieved, and its rules and expectations few, which means it maintains an appropriately fresh and youthful vitality, and each chapter is able to adapt itself according to its own circumstances. Its primary aim is to sanctify and to pray for the sanctification of young people, under the patronage of St John Bosco, the great patron saint of young people. This gives you a basic idea of what the movement is.

I have the pleasure of being chairman of the London chapter of Juventutem, founded about five years ago. I became involved when I moved to London two and a half years ago, first as chapter MC, and then becoming chairman a year ago after the two original founders, Paul Smeaton and Sean Wright left to pursue other commitments. I am also fortunate in support from a dedicated committee: arranging a High Mass and a successful social for 10 months of the year is no easy task, and it is a great support to have the help of others.

A large part of our chapter’s apostolate is liturgical: when I took over as MC, I realised that there was no regular High Mass in London in the Extraordinary Form. There have always been occasional High Masses, but nothing regular, and it seemed a pity that in London of all places, the most full (and theoretically normative) form of the Roman Rite, was not available. We are therefore pleased to be able to celebrate High Mass each month, and are very fortunate in the clergy who support us.

Our celebration of the liturgy has taken on a special angle recently, as we have been asked, and are being sponsored by Una Voce International, to provide polyphony four times a year to celebrate solemn Mass for the intentions of the persecuted church. We are pleased to do this, and our first two have been highly successful, drawing larger numbers than usual. Our Mass in September (pictured above) was followed by a talk

by Dr John Newton of Aid to the Church in Need UK.

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As well as our Masses, we also have a social for young people (18-35) after Mass. This gathering gives young Catholics a chance to mingle and meet other like-minded people. We try to make these interesting, and will occasionally arrange speakers. Previously we have heard from the Revd Scott Tanner, ICKSP, on the work of the Institute, and Rhoslyn Thomas, of the Society of the Protection of the Unborn Child.

Our aim is always the sanctification of youth, and so we finish our evenings by ‘saying good night to Our Lady’ – reciting the chapter prayers and singing the appropriate antiphon to Our Lady.

It can often be easy to behave in one way in church, at prayer, and quite another when dealing with people, whether at home, at study or at work. So, the most important thing about sanctification is practising virtue in all areas of life. This can be very difficult for young people especially. We live among such a broad spectrum of people, and seek their approval, which may mean straying from the path of virtue. Groups such as Juventutem are a great help, therefore, in reminding us that we are not alone and that other young people are treading the same path. This is a great encouragement and support.

Juventutem does also need support however. And more members. Membership is informal: any young person may come to our Mass and social (indeed, anyone of any age is welcome at the Mass), but young people may commit to formal membership, and undertake to pray for the sanctification of youth, customarily the psalm Judica me, from whence the organisation takes its name.

Material support is also a necessity: it is not a cheap thing to arrange a High Mass and a social each month, and we are very grateful to the Latin Mass Society for their support, and to those who come each month and give so generously. If you feel you would like to know more, or would like to offer support in some kind or other, please do get in touch with us, via email: juventutemlondon@gmail.com or Twitter: @JuventutemLond, or through Facebook: facebook.com/londonjuventutem. We would be very glad to hear from you!

© John Aron

© John Aron

Richard Hawker

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

BOOK REVIEW

‘Emancipating Man from God’ How the Left has sabotaged the Family Harriet Murphy Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage Paul Kengor WND Books: Washington DC, 2015 pp 238

T

he Second Vatican Council enriched its teachings on the Sacrament of Marriage, beginning a trajectory which has partially revised the idea of marriage as no more than a remedy for concupiscence. Philosophers such as Edith Stein, Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand, Emmanuel Mounier, Jacques and Raissa Maritain, and Karol Wojtyla were part of this renewal, which has given us countless John Paul II Institutes for Marriage and Family and a new corpus of sophisticated reflection called The Theology of the Body.

Throughout the world this is successfully engaging new generations of university-educated romantics and idealists, firmly convinced that the Church offers a viable, humane and powerful way to God, and antidote to contemporary nihilism caused by the rejection of the Natural Law. These are authentic developments around doctrine in the sense meant by Cardinal Newman. They are matched by developments in the sciences. The technique of natural family planning is a viable alternative to chemical contraception, and used with prudence and with the mind of the Church, helps couples to inculturate marriage in time and place, so as to overcome purely economic pressures. The claim that the Church is static, anti-modern and inflexible is a black legend.

Not everyone is on board. Paul Kengor’s new book chronicles the long march through the institutions of Cultural Marxists armed with propaganda aimed at ‘smashing monogamy’, so to pave the way for a proliferation of alternatives to marriage not ordered to children. Kengor is an American Catholic. He is also a political Conservative who teaches at Grove College in Pennsylvania where he is the Director of the Center for Vision and Values. He sees himself in a tradition of anti-Communist activists, following trail-blazers like Senator Joe McCarthy (1908-1957). Kengor also cites with approval the convert from Communism and writer, Ralph Toledano (19162007), and the Catholic journalist William Buckley (1925-2008).

He is the author of defences of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, and critiques of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Writing in a brisk, populist style, his book begins with one quote from Pope Francis about ‘ideological colonisation’ of the family and another, an exhortation from Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto: ‘Abolition of the family!’ Twenty chapters chart the story of the success of the intellectual Left in

redefining marriage, its techniques of indoctrination using the media and the universities to ‘spread the word’.

Kengor does two things well. He provides thumbnail sketches of the perversity or immorality of advocates of radical change as it was practiced in private. He also summarizes the ideology of radical change used by ‘change agents’ fired up by hatred of God, Christ, the Church and humanity – citing the slogans such as ‘sexual communism’, ‘group sex’, and ‘free love’ which were the experiments in the 1960s, now obsolete because ‘polymorphous sexuality’, ‘promiscuity’, ‘eroticism’ and ‘wargasm’ are growing in respectability. Kengor argues that early Communists were often quite bourgeois. Homosexuality was not part of the original theory about changing society through changing marriage. Yet it represents the ultimate logic of the revolution.

Starting with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the contemporary argument about whether the two Communists really intended to destroy the traditional family completely or simply redesign it by shifting women in to the work-force and children into care facilities, Kengor moves on to the 20th century to identify revolutionaries.

In the US, these were Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, who symbolically joins with the philosopher of pragmatism, John Dewey, to make marriage miserable. In the 1960s the US hosted representatives from the Frankfurt School of Philosophy in Germany: atheist intellectuals who provided the world with the largest number of doctrinaire Marxists, Freudians and philosophers of change. Into this story of the emancipation of man from God, Kengor inserts brilliant anecdotes on the repentant Communists who were received into the Church by the fierce anti-Communist, the Servant of God, Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

Studies show that only 2% of the world’s population self-identifies as ‘gay’. The counterargument to gay marriage should also include a question, therefore, about why the curriculum in schools and universities overlooks the culture of the traditional family. The majority of the population may be sympathetic to gay marriage, as in Ireland, only to the extent they have not understood the Church’s teachings against contraception, or because they are sympathetic to the new auto-eroticism. Pope Francis has said that members of a ‘Church Militant’ need to engage in the New Evangelisation. To join in with the hysteria round the success of a militant minority is also to challenge St John Paul II, who said we must talk about faith using reason.

Harriet Murphy’s book The Abolition of (Wo)Man or Three Manifestos for the Reform of the University in the Twenty-First Century will be published by Angelico Press. She is an author and lives in Bavaria.

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PAPA STRONSAY

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015

Monastic Revival on the Orkney Isles The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer Alan Frost

A visit to a Congress in London last year, which included some monks from a community on a remote island in the Orkneys, Papa Stronsay, so aroused the curiosity of an LMS Representative, that he decided to visit them…

T

he heritage of communities of monks devoting their lives to the service of God on the offshore isles of Britain goes back well over a 1,000 years, but the attacks of the Vikings well into the Middle Ages seemingly ended the tradition on Papa Stronsay in the Orkneys until a mere 16 years ago.

Papa Stronsay is a little island off Stronsay, one of the main islands of the Orkneys, reached by ferry from Kirkwall.

To get to it one has to be taken across a short channel by the monks who own the island, on their own small but adequate boat. The little island that is their base and their home is clearly visible from Stronsay on a good day.

Their main building is an old farmhouse in sturdy but slightly forbidding grey stone, and nearby are a clutch of single story buildings and large sheds that bespeak a practical community.

Not chalets, but cells Approaching the mooring point for smaller craft at Papa Stronsay, one can be deceived into thinking a row of holiday chalets awaits nearby, but these are in fact cells for monks and visitors in which a lot of private time for contemplation and self-examination is spent, just as the original Order’s founder, St Alphonsus Liguori, would have wished. For these monks and priests are Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer (often also called ‘Transalpine Redemptorists’), whose father figure and spiritual guide founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in November 1732.

A standard guide for tourists, picked up at Kirkwall, the main town of the Orkneys, refers briefly to Papa Stronsay and notes, with huge understatement, that the monks returned to the island in 1999. It might mention, as a later BBC documentary would reveal (available on YouTube), that this was a return after some several hundred years. It might also state that there have been communities of monks on Papa Stronsay going back to

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the ‘Dark Ages’, albeit the known evidence is limited. However, the remains of a 12th century chapel dedicated to St Nicholas are clearly to be seen. The role of the monks here at this time and earlier can be found in a saga known as The Orkneyinga.

The chapels used by the monks now are converted farm buildings, principally old lambing sheds. Once inside, you would not be aware of this for the monks, so dependent initially (and still) upon benefactors, have created lovely sacred places of worship and devotion from an astonishing variety of images, sacramentals, statues and religious artefacts. These include relics and pictures of Redemptorist saints along with numerous Stations of the Cross from various parts of Europe.

In the cells, as aids to prayer and contemplation, there are images of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, St Alphonsus, the Passion of Our Saviour, prie-dieux, and on the table a crucifix and a skull; nothing morbid, just a reminder of our mortality.

As St Alphonsus said, there is nothing shorter than time, but nothing more important.

For the guest, meals may be brought in a wicker basket whilst the monks and novices and inquirers eat in their basic refectory, in silence, whilst a lesson is read by one of the monks. The visitor is also subjected to the rule of lights out at 9.15pm, when the generator is switched off, and being woken by a monk ringing a bell at 5.25am and then at 6.00am for the first office and Mass. Breakfast precedes the Rosary. Thereafter, for the brothers it is a morning of heavy work, stopping mid-day for the Angelus, then lunch and an afternoon and evening schedule of prayer, work and contemplation, which usually includes offering All photos © Alan Frost

ISSUE 186 - WINTER 2015 Mass in Latin in the traditional rite for the faithful on Stronsay.

Indeed, the whole place has a feel of being a work-in-progress.

Most of the buildings and paths on Papa Stronsay have been constructed by the monks after much trial and error.

They are particularly gratified to have established a number of solid concrete walkways. The power of the wind forced the monks to learn the hard way about creating structures that could withstand gales and storms. Similarly, the artistic brothers who created the statues and religious images in niches and fields out in the open, also, up to a point, mastered the art of sculpture for the Beaufort Scale!

In a relatively short time, the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer have achieved a degree of self-sufficiency, growing their own fruit and vegetables, keeping livestock, with a special line in geese, and producing their own milk and cheese.

Around 10 or 12 monks do this, though the number of cells built indicates hopes for more vocations. Appropriately, ‘Papa’ means ‘priest’ in old Norse and the ‘Priests’ Island of Stronsay’ is now also known as Golgotha Island, and knowledge of the existence and work of the Papa Stronsay monks is spreading internationally. Major reasons for this are their impressive websites (via www.papastronsay.com) and their own publishing unit, The Desert Will Flower Press, set up some years ago.

Though the monks come from a range of places across the world, as yet they only have one other House, in Christchurch, New Zealand. As one of the younger brothers put it (and there are a number in their 20s and 30s): ‘We have houses at opposite ends of the world, all we’ve got to do is work on the in between.’

In fact, the Father Superior and founder of this Redemptorist community, Fr Michael Mary, is from New Zealand, but it took quite some time, after setting up temporary communities in France and England, before the prayed-for ‘benefits of providence’ were answered.

The island was purchased by the monks on the approach to the third millennium and then on 15 August 2012, the community was granted canonical recognition as a Clerical Institute of Diocesan Right by Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB, Bishop of Aberdeen, as the Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer. A very important aspect of this development is that the priests and monks look after the local church on Stronsay, Our Lady’s Chapel, with its beautiful interior. This means their boats set out and back most days, a long way only in miles from the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

There were monks serving God in the first millennium, the early part and end of the second, and now in the third millennium on the island of Papa Stronsay. And the present community is growing and beginning to thrive. As the monks proclaim to us in their works, what is happening is not the receding of holy tradition but its ‘re-seeding.’

MACKLIN STREET

Of prayer books and calendars...

Stephen Moseling

D

uring the past few months Macklin Street could easily have been mistaken for a publishing house.

Elsewhere in this edition of Mass of Ages you will see advertisements for our Traditional Calendar and our Ordo for 2016. Over the years, these publications have proved to be increasingly popular with members of the LMS (as well as others from around the world) and are essential resources for all who love the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

For 2016, the Calendar features photographs of the major events organised to celebrate our 50th anniversary year. A year in which many of the events saw an increase in attendance – a trend we hope will continue in 2016. We have an ample supply of Calendars – if you are at a loss as to what to give someone as a Christmas present, there is nothing better than the LMS Calendar!

After several years in production, we are delighted to be able to announce that our Ordinary Prayers of the Traditional Latin Mass booklet is now available. This is a unique publication.

It contains the Order of Mass in Latin and English (with a newly prepared English translation), illustrations by Stefano Mazzeo, prayers for Communion, the order of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the Angelus and twelve pages of Chant. LMS members should receive a free copy with this edition of Mass of Ages. Additional copies are available to purchase via our website or direct from the office. www.twitter.com/latimmassuk 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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LUZAR VESTMENTS

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