Oremus July/August 2020

July/August 2020 | Edition Number 260 | FREE

Westminster Cathedral Magazine

St Benedict, whose Monastic Rule offers a foundation for faith and civilisation, has his feast day on 11 July and is honoured as a Patron of Europe

A LITTLE-KNOWN VIEW

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Fr John Scott

I am standing in the choir apse with the camera, in the position usually occupied by some of the choristers. But it was not ever thus. Nowadays the console of the apse organ is situated on the south side of the apse and the player has the advantage both of his own sight of what is happening on the sanctuary and of a moveable tv camera which can focus in and out. Previously, however, in days before tv cameras, the console was situated in the back of the centre of the apse. How was the organist to discern what was happening in the liturgy? Observing the conductor was possible, but seeing what was going on at the west side of the altar, all at a lower level, was not.

Hence what can be discerned on the wall roughly at the centre of the image, above the spotlights and to the left of the baldacchino. It is a large mirror, which is angled so as to enable the organist to observe the liturgical action on the altar steps (remember that it was designed for observing Mass celebrated facing east). Having been out of use for that purpose for nearly 50 years and sitting above a battery of spotlights, the mirror has succumbed to dust and heat to such an extent that it now seems to reflect no image of the altar steps, as the image demonstrates. Mirror, mirror on the wall, alas, who is the dirtiest of them all?

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The Assistant Master of the Music tells me that if one stands where I did and ducks down, then a view of the altar is just discernable through the grime.

Oremus

March 2020

CONTENTS

Inside Oremus

Oremus Cathedral Clergy House 42 Francis Street London SW1P 1QW T 020 7798 9055 E oremus@westminstercathedral.org.uk W www.westminstercathedral.org.uk

Oremus, the magazine of Westminster Cathedral, reflects the life of the Cathedral and the lives of those who make it a place of faith in central London. If you think that you would like to contribute an article or an item of news, please contact the Editor.

Patron The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Chairman The Administrator (Awaiting appointment) Editor Fr John Scott

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Cathedral Life: Past & Present Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

by Fr John Scott Cathedral History: The Arts and Crafts Men

by Patrick Rogers

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16 & 17

Essential Services at the Centre

24

Cathedral History in Pictures: Cardinal Heenan in a Crowded Sanctuary by Paul Tobin

25

17

Oremus Team Tony Banks – Distribution Zoe Goodway – Marketing Manel Silva – Subscriptions Berenice Roetheli – Proofreading Ellen Gomes – Archives

Features Book Notice: Michael Collins’ Raphael’s World

Design and Art Direction Julian Game

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A Drunkard at the National Gallery 6 & 7

Registered Charity Number 233699 ISSN 1366-7203 Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily represent the views of the Editor or the Oremus Team. Neither are they the official views of Westminster Cathedral. The Editor reserves the right to edit all contributions.

Publication of advertisements does not imply any form of recommendation or endorsement.

Unless otherwise stated, photographs are published under a creative commons or similar licence. Every effort is made to credit all images. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.

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Accompanying the Lord with St Matthew

8&9

Stirred: A Memory of Warwickshire Sisters by Fr John Scott 10 & 11 True Faith by St John Henry Newman

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Healing in the Confessional – An Australian Plea

12

Stormont Challenges Westminster

by Lord Alton

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‘What is Man?’ – Learning from the Catechism Part 1 14 & 15

21

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‘Private, Individual Prayer’ A Man to be Praised – Alfred the Great

by Dr Michael Straiton KCSG

22 &23

A Change in the Law: Organ Donation 32

Regulars

The cover image shows a wing of a triptych at Blaubeuren Abbey, Baden-Württemberg in Germany. The structure is from the Ulm workshop, with the statues of St Benedict (left) and St John the Baptist (right) by Michel Erhart, 1491–94.

Printed by Premier Print Group 020 7987 0604

July/August 2020

Oremus

From the Editor

5

Monthly Album

18 & 19 21

Friends of the Cathedral Diary and Notices

28

26 & 27

Crossword and Poem of the Month

28

In Retrospect

30

St Vincent de Paul Catholic Primary School

31 3

BOOK NOTICE

Join the Companions ... and help us to keep publishing Oremus free of charge Although we earn income from the advertising which we carry, Oremus relies on donations from readers to cover its production costs.

The Companions of Oremus was established to recognise those who give generously to support us. Open exclusively to individuals, Companions’ names are published in the magazine each month (see page 7). All members are invited to one or more social events during the year and Mass is offered for their intentions from time to time.

If you would like to support us by joining the Companions, please write to Oremus, Cathedral Clergy House, 42 Francis Street, London SW1P 1QW or email oremuscomps@rcdow.org.uk with your contact details, including postcode. Members are asked to give a minimum of £100 annually. Please mention how you would like your name to appear in our membership list and if you are eligible to Gift Aid your donation. Postal subscriptions to Oremus may be purchased through the Cathedral Gift Shop’s website or by using the coupon printed in the magazine.

Thank you for your support.

The Divine Painter Hailed by his contemporaries as 'the divine painter,' Raphael Sanzio of Urbino (1483-1520) was one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance. A contemporary of Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael was sought out by popes, kings and aristocrats to decorate their residences, a superstar even in his own lifetime, who even today remains a byword for classic perfection. Michael Collins' new biography, Raphael's World, is published as the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael fell in April this year and the book portrays the era in which the artist lived.

Born 30 years after the invention of the printing press and nine years before the discovery of the New World, Raphael harnessed the new techniques of printing and the riches which flowed from the Americas into Europe in the early 16th century. The political map of Europe was changing rapidly even as 4

he studied in the studio of Perugino, to Florence where he saw Michelangelo and Da Vinci at work, and on to Rome, where he painted for popes and cardinals, as well as Agostino Chigi, one of the wealthiest patrons of the day.

The reader is brought into the ducal court of Urbino, to explore the complex and dramatically changing landscape in which the artist flourished, and is introduced to the fascinating panoply of his patrons Raphael painted for his wealthy patrons.

While Raphael painted the Apostolic Palace and designed tapestries to be hung in the Sistine Chapel, a German Augustinian friar, Martin Luther was about to rend Christendom apart.

Based on contemporary documentation, the book follows the young Raphael from Perugia, where

Michael Collins is a priest of the Archdiocese of Dublin and has written and edited award-winning books, which have been translated into 12 different languages, his most recent book being Newman: A Short Biography.

Raphael’s World by Michael Collins is published in Ireland and the UK by Messenger Publications; ISBN 978 1788 121 231; paperback, 128 pp; £17.95 Oremus

July/August 2020

EDITORIAL

From the Editor On Saturday 13 June, Mgr Martin Hayes, the Vicar General, wrote to us all in these terms: ‘[This is] to let you know that the Cardinal has agreed, with sadness, to accept Canon Christopher Tuckwell’s wish to stand down from his role of Administrator of Westminster Cathedral on grounds of serious ill-health. In doing so the Cardinal has thanked Canon Christopher for his outstanding service and ministry at the Cathedral, initially as Sub-Administrator from 2006 and then as Administrator from 2008 until today.

The Cardinal has appointed Fr Daniel Humphreys as Acting Administrator until a new Administrator is appointed.’

First we offer to Canon Christopher the assurance of our continued prayers. This last year has brought many trials for him and I know that he is grateful for the concern and support that he has received from so many friends and faithful members of the Cathedral community. Please persevere in your prayer. We cannot, of course, do that without being aware in gratitude, as Cardinal Vincent has noted, of the very significant contributions that he has made to the Cathedral, both in its physical structure and in its spiritual life. I hope that in September’s Oremus we shall be able to write more about this.

Secondly, the Chaplains assure Fr Daniel of their support as he takes on the role of Acting Administrator, a role for which the last months have done much to prepare him. It is a blessing that Clergy House is a place of mutual support and friendship, and we shall continue to work together in that spirit.

All of this has happened in the midst of preparations for the reopening of the Cathedral after the wholly unprecedented closure of churches and cessation of sacramental life that has lasted for over three months. It was not to be expected that we could adapt overnight to patterns of life and prayer that have been totally unfamiliar; at times, the atmosphere of puzzlement in a variety of situations has been almost tangible.

Perhaps it is appropriate, if challenging, that this should have happened in a year dedicated to ‘The God Who Speaks’.

In this Oremus you will find encouragement to become familiar again with St Matthew’s gospel in its entirety through an intensive immersion. The political concerns which have spread widely from the USA across at least the Western world also suggested to me that it would be good to be reminded of the Church’s teaching about the nature of the human person and the intrinsic dignity which belongs to all who are created in the image and likeness of God. Much shallow modern discourse presents distorted understandings, but the Church offers us a vision of the Truth as revealed in Jesus Christ, the Way and our Life.

Westminster Cathedral Cathedral Clergy House 42 Francis Street London SW1P 1QW Telephone 020 7798 9055 Service times 020 7798 9097 Email chreception@rcdow.org.uk www.westminstercathedral.org.uk Cathedral Chaplains Fr Daniel Humphreys, Acting Administrator Fr Julio Albornoz Fr Michael Donaghy Fr Andrew Gallagher, Precentor Fr Hugh MacKenzie Fr Vincent Mbu’i SVD Fr Rajiv Michael Fr John Scott, Registrar Sub-Administrator’s Assistant James Coeur-de-Lion Also in residence Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of Victories Music Department Awaiting appointment, Master of Music Peter Stevens Obl. OSB, Assistant Master of Music Callum Alger, Organ Scholar Cathedral Manager Peter McNulty Estates Manager Neil Fairbairn Chapel of Ease Sacred Heart Church Horseferry Road SW1P 2EF

With best wishes and prayers

July/August 2020

Oremus

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© National Gallery

A PAINTING PURCHASED

The Drunkard (El Borracho), Zarauz

Low Life at the National The National Gallery has acquired its first painting by Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923), The Drunkard (El Borracho), Zarauz, painted in 1910, and it can now be explored on the Gallery’s website. The painting is not a stranger to London, its first visit being last year for the exhibition Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light, which was the first major UK exhibition of the artist's work in more than a hundred years at the National Gallery. More than 167,000 people visited that exhibition, which featured more than 60 works by the artist known as Spain’s Impressionist, and whose last London exhibition, in 1908, advertised him as ’The World's Greatest Living Painter’.

The Drunkard, Zarauz was purchased for £325k with the support of a generous legacy from David Leslie Medd OBE. The newly acquired painting is a large-scale sketch, rapidly executed in situ as Sorolla observed the taverns of Zarauz in the Basque Country where he and his family spent the summer of 1910. The artist depicts the human drama of the devastating effects of alcoholism: five men in various states of inebriation gather in the shadowy interior of a tavern. One of them, more drunk than the others, stares through watery eyes directly at the artist as another pushes a glass of cider towards him, making fun of his drunken state. Evidence of the artist's hasty, improvisatory response to the ramshackle scene is seen in the rapid application of relatively thin layers of paint and the brilliant economy of brushstrokes where light and shadow are precisely evoked with minimal means. That Sorolla never worked up a 'finished' tavern scene from Zarauz suggests that what 6

he sought was that very fleeting sense of immediacy. That he was particularly pleased with The Drunkard, Zarauz is indicated by his decision to include it the following year in his second major American retrospective exhibition, at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The 1910 date of the picture is interesting, as it was the first time in 10 years that Sorolla had turned to such dark themes. His Sad Inheritance (1899, Fondación Bancaja, Valencia), a haunting evocation of physical decline, depicts a crowd of sick and disabled naked children, including some using crutches due to polio, accompanied by a priest, on the Malvarrosa beach in Valencia. That painting, which won the gold medal at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, marked the end of the 'social' phase of his career.

For the following decade Sorolla largely dedicated himself to elegant portraits and the sun-dappled scenes of leisure along the seacoasts of Spain on which the world-wide renown won during his lifetime was based. Born in Valencia in 1863, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida succeeded in becoming one of the world's most famous painters of the period.

This was thanks to a unique technique that showed a deep allegiance to the tradition of Spanish painting while capturing the dazzling play of sunlight.

National Gallery Director, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, said: ‘New pictures help to expand our understanding of the European painting tradition and enrich the story which the Gallery tells, so we are delighted that this extraordinary picture now belongs to everyone, including future Oremus

July/August 2020

A PAINTING PURCHASED generations. Following the success of our 2019 Sorolla exhibition at the National Gallery, it is very pleasing to welcome the first work by him in the collection. The subject of a drunkard in a Basque tavern is perhaps untypical of the artist, but the virtuosity of his brushstroke and the confident, sketch-like handling reveal him at his dazzling best’. When the Gallery reopens, The Drunkard, Zarauz will be on display in Room 41 with contemporary paintings from across Europe and America, adding a touch of social realism to the National Gallery's collection of early 20thcentury pictures by artists such as Cézanne, Renoir, Monet, Klimt and Bellows.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida was born in Valencia in 1863 and was only two years old when both of his parents died in a cholera epidemic. His exceptional artistic talent was evident from a young age. He started exhibiting paintings at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid in his late teens, and, in 1881, was accepted by the Academy of Fine Arts in Valencia. In 1884, not yet 21, he exhibited his first large history painting, which was acquired by the Spanish government. In 1888 he married Clotilde García del Castillo, who was to be his muse and the subject of many of his pictures. The couple settled in Madrid in 1890 and went on to have three children. Sorolla's other great love was for his home city of Valencia and many of his best works, often painted en plein air, captured the effects of blazing Mediterranean sunlight and the seacoast of Valencia.

From 1890, his career was a breathless succession of Spanish and international exhibitions, commissions for portraits, showers of honours and almost ceaseless travel.

Paintings by him were exhibited in Munich, Paris, Chicago, Vienna, Venice, and as far away as Buenos Aires. In 1895, his painting Return from Fishing (now in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris) was exhibited at the Paris Salon and then purchased by the French state, confirming his status as a major international figure. By 1900, he could be considered as the most famous of all living Spanish artists. In 1911, Sorolla received his most ambitious commission to date, from the Hispanic Society of America, to paint a series of canvases to decorate their library. The result, Vision of Spain, depicting the regional costumes and customs of the major provinces of Spain, became an all-consuming project for several years. Sadly, he never saw this epic mural cycle installed in New York, as he suffered a stroke while painting in the garden in Spain, in June 1920. When he died, three years later, he was buried like a state hero, with Reuter’s correspondent reporting that: ‘There were wild scenes at the public funeral of the famous Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla in consequence of the deceased’s family opposing the desire of the artist’s friends to carry the coffin on their shoulders instead of it being borne on a gun carriage. Sorolla’s son struck a Republican deputy in the face and then climbed on the gun carriage in order to drag back the coffin. A representative of the King of Spain who was attending the funeral, intervened. During the succeeding uproar the parties arranged a compromise that the coffin should be carried on the gun carriage for half the journey, and carried by the deceased artist’s friends for the remainder of the journey’.

July/August 2020

Oremus

Companions of Oremus We are very grateful for the support of the following: Mrs Mary Barsh Dr Stuart Blackie Anne Veronica Bond Richard Bremer Francis George Clark Daniel Crowley Ms Georgina Enang Fred Gardiner Connie Gibbes Zoe & Nick Goodway Rosalinda Grimaldo Mrs Valerie Hamblen Bernadette Hau Bernard Adrian Hayes Mrs Cliona Howell Alice M Jones & Jacob F Jones Poppy K Mary Thérèse Kelly Florence M G Koroma Raymund Livesey Alan Lloyd in memoriam Barry Lock Clare and John Lusby Pamela McGrath Linda McHugh Peter McNelly in memoriam Christiana Thérèse Macarthy-Woods James Maple Dionne Marchetti Paul Marsden Mary Maxwell Abundia Toledo Munar Chris Stewart Munro Mrs Brigid Murphy Kate Nealon Cordelia Onodu Cris Ragonton Emel Rochat Berenice Roetheli John Scanlan Mr Luke Simpson Sonja Soper Tessa and Ben Strickland Julia Sutherland Eileen Terry Mr Alex Walker Jacqueline Worth Patricia M Wright and of our anonymous Companions If you would like to become a Companion of Oremus, see page 4

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THE GOD WHO SPEAKS

Accompanying the Lord with St Matthew The Coronavirus lockdown may have caused many of us to forget that we are celebrating a Year of the Word of the Lord, with St Matthew at the heart of it as we hear his Gospel read at Mass on Sundays. But there are other ways of increasing our familiarity with the apostle’s text.

On a number of occasions early in his pontificate Pope Francis asked the crowds in St Peter’s Square: ‘Have you read part of the Gospel to-day?’ or ‘Do you carry a Gospel with you to be able to read some verses each day?’ The Holy Father commends reading part of the Gospel every day so that we can listen to Jesus at all times. Throughout 2020 the Bishops of England and Wales invite you to join them in reading St Matthew’s Gospel, just a few verses each day. If you are able to share that reading aloud with your family all the better, perhaps taking turns with the texts for the day.

In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) the Holy Father says the Lord does not disappoint those who take the risk of letting Him encounter them each day: ‘No one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord (EG 3)’, ‘Mary, Virgin and Mother, ... obtain for us a new ardour born of the resurrection, that we may bring to all the Gospel of life which triumphs over death (EG 288)’. May the words of the gospel bring you and your families renewed faith, hope and joy.

Bishop Peter Brignall, Bishop of Wrexham and Chair of the 2020 Planning Team.

Day 12 Jesus Heals a Paralytic 9:2-8

Day 1 The Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah 1:1-1:17 The Birth of Jesus the Messiah 1:18-25

The Calling of Matthew 9:9-13 The Question about Fasting 9:14-17

Day 2 The Visit of the Wise Men 2:1-2:12 The Escape to Egypt 2:13-15 The Massacre of the Infants 2:16-23

Day 13 A Girl Restored to Life and a Woman Healed 9:18-26 Jesus Heals two Blind Men 9:27-31

Day 3 Return from Egypt 2:19-23

Jesus Heals One Who was Mute 9:3234 Sound Eye 6:22-23 Serving Two Masters 6:24

Day 14 The Harvest is Great, the Labourers few 9:35-38 The Twelve Apostles10:1-4

Do Not Worry 6:25-34

The Mission of the Twelve 10:5-15

Jesus Begins his Ministry in Galilee 4:12-17 Jesus Calls his first Disciples 4:18-22

Judging Others 7:1-5

Coming Persecutions 10:16-25

Day 9 Profaning the Holy 7:6

Day 15 Whom to Fear 10:26-33

Jesus Ministers to Crowds of People 4:23-25

Ask Search Knock 7:7-11

Not Peace, but a Sword 10:34-39 Rewards 10:40-11:1

The Proclamation of John the Baptist 3:1-12 The Baptism of Jesus 3:13-17 Day 4 The Temptation of Jesus 4:1-11

Day 5 The Beatitudes 5:1-12 Salt and Light 5:13-16 The Law and the Prophets 5:16-20 Day 6 Concerning Anger 5:21-26 Concerning Adultery 5:17-30 Concerning Divorce 5:31-32 Concerning Oaths 5:33-37 Concerning Retaliation 5:38-42 Day 7 Love for Enemies 5:43-48 Concerning Almsgiving 6:1-4 Concerning Prayer 6:5-15 Concerning Fasting 6:16-18 Day 8 Concerning Treasures 6:19-21 The

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The Golden Rule 7:12 The Narrow Gate 7:13-14 A Tree and its Fruit 7:15-20 Concerning Self-Deception 7:21-23 Hearers and Doers 7:24-28 Day 10 Jesus Cleanses a Leper 8:1-4 Jesus Heals a Centurion’s Servant 8:513 Jesus Heals many at Peter’s House 8:14-17 Day 11 Would-be Followers of Jesus 8:18-22

Messengers from John the Baptist 11:26 Jesus Praises John the Baptist 11:7-19 Day 16 Woes to Unrepentant Cities 11:2024 Jesus Thanks his Father 11:25-30 Plucking Grain on the Sabbath 12:1-8 Day 17 The Man with a Withered Hand 12:914 God’s Chosen-Servant 12:15-21 Jesus and Beelzebul 12:22-32 A Tree and its Fruit 12:33-37

Jesus Stills the Storm 8:23-27

Day 18 The Sign of Jonah 12:38-42

Jesus Heals the Gadarene Demoniacs 8:28-9:1

The Return of the Unclean Spirit 12:4345 The True Family of Jesus 12:46-50 Oremus

July/August 2020

THE GOD WHO SPEAKS Day 19 The Parable to the Sower 13:1-9 The Purpose of the Parables 13:10-17 The Parable of the Sower Explained 13:18-23 Day 20 The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat 13:24-30 The Parable of the Mustard seed 13:31-32

Day 27 The Parable of the Lost Sheep 18:10-14 Reproving Another Who Sins 18:15-20 Forgiveness 18:21-22

Day 37 The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids 25:1-13 The Parable of the Talents 25:14-30

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant 18:23-35

Day 38 The Judgement of the Nations 25:31-45 The Plot to Kill Jesus 26:1-5

Day 28 Teaching about Divorce 19:1-12 Jesus Blesses Little Children 9:13-15 The Rich Young Man 19:16-30

The Anointing at Bethany 26:6-13

The Use of Parables 13:34-35

Day 29 The Labourers in the Vineyard 20:1-16

Day 39 Judas Agrees to Betray Jesus 26:14-16 The Passover with the Disciples 26:1730 Peter’s Denial Foretold 26:31-35

Jesus Explains the Parable of the Weeds 13:36-43

A 3rd Time Jesus Foretells His Death & Resurrection 20:17-19

Day 40 Jesus Prays in Gethsemane 26:36-46

Day 21 Three Parables 13:44-50

Day 30 The Request of the Mother of James and John 20:20-28 Jesus Heals Two blind Men 20:29-33

The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus 26:4756

The Parable of the Yeast 13:33

Treasures New and Old 13:51-53 The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth 13:54-58 The Death of John the Baptist 14:1-12 Day 22 Feeding the Five Thousand 14:13-21 Jesus Walks on the Water 14:22-33 Jesus Heals the sick in Gennesaret 14:34-14:35 Day 23 The Tradition of the Elders 15:1-9 Things that Defile 15:10-20 The Canaanite Woman’s Faith 15:21-28 Jesus Cures many People 15:29-31 Day 24 Feeding Four Thousand 15:32-39 The Demand for a Sign 16:1-4 The Yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees 16:5:12 Day 25 Peter’s Declaration about Jesus 16:1320 Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection 16:21-23 The Cross and Self-Denial 16:24-28 The Transfiguration 17:1-13 Day 26 Jesus Cures a Boy with a Demon 17:14-21 Jesus again Foretells His Death and Resurrection 17:22-23 Jesus and the Temple Tax 17:24-27 True Greatness 18:1-5 Temptations to Sin 18:6-9 July/August 2020

Oremus

Day 31 Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem 21:1-11 Jesus Cleanses the Temple 21:12-17 Jesus Curses the Fig Tree 21:18-22 Day 32 The Authority of Jesus Questioned 21:23-27 The Parable of the Two Sons 21:28-32 The Parable of the Wicked Tenants 21:33-46 Day 33 The Parable of the Wedding Banquet 22:1-14 The Question about Paying Taxes 22:15-22 The Question about the Resurrection 22:23-33 Day 34 The Greatest Commandment 22:34-40

Day 41 Jesus before the High Priest 26:5768 Peter’s Denial of Jesus 26:69-75 Jesus Brought before Pilate 27:1-2 The Suicide of Judas 27:3-10 Pilate Questions Jesus 27:11-14 Day 42 Barabbas or Jesus? 27:15-23 Pilate hands Jesus over to be Crucified 27:24-26 The Soldiers Mock Jesus 27:27-31 Day 43 The Crucifixion of Jesus 27:32-44 The Death of Jesus 27:45-56 The Burial of Jesus 27:57-61 Day 44 The Guard at the Tomb 27:62-66 The Resurrection of Jesus 28:1-10 The Report of the Guard 28:11-15

The Question about David’s Son 22:4146

The Commissioning of the Disciples 28:16-20

Jesus Denounces Scribes and Pharisees 23:1-36

The Gospel of the Lord; praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Day 35 Lament over Jerusalem 23:37-39

from Various writings on the History of the Order of Preachers.

The Destruction of the Temple Foretold 24:1-2 Signs of the End of the Age 24:3-8 Persecutions Foretold 24:9-14 The Desolating Sacrilege 24:15-31 Day 36 The Coming of the Son of Man 24:2931 The Lesson of the Fig Tree 24:32-35 The Necessity of watchfulness 24:3644 The Faithful or the Unfaithful Slave 24:45-51

Of Saint Dominic it is written: ‘In his conversations and letters he often urged the brothers of the Order to study constantly the Old and New Testaments. He always carried with him the gospel according to Matthew and the epistles of Paul, and so well did he study them that he almost knew them from memory’.

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I HAVE AN EMAIL A DREAM TO THE EDITOR

Sisters Departed and the Legacy of a Church Fr John Scott I was pleased recently to receive an email from Fr Philip Newbold, a retired priest of the Archdiocese of Birmingham. He writes: ‘Last autumn on a visit to London I called at the Cathedral and while there I picked up a copy of Oremus magazine. Later, on reading your article "A Discovery" (edition no. 250, page 32), I was more than surprised and delighted to view one of the obit notices from Our Lady of the Angels Priory, Princethorpe in Warwickshire.

It asked prayers for the repose of the soul of Mother Mary Raphael O.S.B. My surprise and delight stem from my family's long association with the Community at the Priory. My mother's friendship with the Sisters began in 1928 and lasted until her death in 1981. In turn, over the years, her husband and then my sister, brother and finally myself, were taken to the Priory for the Sisters to ‘coo’ over us and receive their hospitality at afternoon tea. One of the highlights was attending Benediction in the exquisitely beautiful Priory church, designed by Peter Paul Pugin. It is still my favourite church. However, because the Community was enclosed, we had to congregate for Benediction in the Strangers' Chapel. On my mother's request we were permitted by Mother Prioress to enter the choir and marvel at Pugin's work. This leads me to be able to recognise the handwriting on the obit notice belonging to Mother Mary Benedict Meek. She was Prioress from the early 1960s until 1989.

Following the Sisters’ departure from Princethorpe in 1966 it became a boys' school run by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, and it is now known as Princethorpe College.

I attended there for a short time. Alas, the Sisters closed their newer Priory at Fernham circa 2002, and I think there are only two former Princethorpe Sisters now remaining. The article reminded me of so much; we thank God for the great legacy given us by so many who have lived their vocation in prayer, in silence and obscurity. All to the glory of the Lord.

They are praying for us all during this critical time’.

Fr Philip’s kind troubling to write encouraged me to look up Princethorpe College and its chapel. Alas, the internetaccessible images of its fine interior are not of a quality to enable adequate reproduction here, but an image search will reveal something to you. Meanwhile we make do with a black and white image from a 1945 guide book to the Community and its church of Our Lady and All Angels, 10

A view of the church’s interior, showing the sanctuary screen with rood figures and baldacchino over the high altar

and I quote the following description from Taking Stock, the Bishops’ Architectural Survey of Catholic Churches in England and Wales: ‘A large and conspicuous late Gothic Revival church built for French Benedictine nuns from designs by Peter Paul Pugin and opened in 1901. The church replaced a smaller 1830s chapel serving St Mary’s Priory, although that chapel survives (altered) amongst the buildings of Princethorpe College. Despite the forbidding red brickwork of the exterior, the church is among Peter Paul Pugin’s richest buildings, with some of his best surviving metalwork and woodwork, along with a full set of stained glass by the Hardman firm and other furnishings of note.’

The history is recorded as follows: ‘Princethorpe College occupies the buildings of St Mary’s Priory, begun in 1833 for French Benedictine nuns from Montargis. They had escaped from the Revolution in 1792, been given asylum by the Prince Regent and Mrs Fitzherbert, and had moved to Norfolk, then to the West Riding, then to Lancashire, and finally to Princethorpe in 1835. The original buildings included a school as well as the convent. After the nuns left in 1965-6, Princethorpe became an independent school, run since 2001 by the Princethorpe Foundation’.

Oremus

July/August 2020

TRUE FAITH John Russell of Leamington designed the original buildings in 1832-5 and most of them were complete by mid-1835, when the nuns and pupils moved in (even though much remained unfinished internally). The design was based on the nuns’ recollection of their former house at Montargis, and was considered by A W Pugin to be ‘a miserable specimen of the tawdry trashy taste of the Modern religious.’ Joseph Aloysius Hansom adapted and added to Russell’s designs between 1837 and 1844, including the old church, and he or his son Joseph Stanislaus Hansom continued to work at Princethorpe until 1892. Then came works by T. R. Donnelly and by Pugin & Pugin in the 1890s. The original priory church building dating from 1835-7 with its small turret still survives, but was subdivided in 1968 with a theatre on the ground floor and a library above. Nevertheless, it retains some of its historic furnishings, including a window designed by A. W. Pugin and made by William Wailes, and other glass by Hardman.

A new and much more ambitious church was built in 1898-1901 to the designs of Peter Paul Pugin. Much of the money came from Hilda de Trafford, for whose family E W

Pugin had built extensively in Manchester, and the church was lavishly furnished by Pugin, the Hardman firm, Joseph A Pippet, Boulton of Cheltenham and others. Nine bells in the tower were cast by John Warner & Sons, London. Today the church is used largely by the school. Briefly, the building is in Decorated Gothic style, faced with bright red Ruabon brick, with dressings of Grinshill stone and roof coverings of Westmorland slate. The building has a complex plan designed for use by three distinct groups: nuns, schoolgirls and the wider public. The fittings are of considerable elaboration and richness and were mostly designed by P P Pugin, including the elaborate high altar and baldachino, both made by Boulton of Cheltenham, with the wooden side altars by the same firm. The iron sanctuary screen is by Hardman Powell & Co. The fresco decoration in the north chapel is by J A Pippet, the stained glass all by Hardman. The organ was built by James Binns of Leeds in 1900 (restored in 1984). Today a forward altar and sanctuary are placed in front of the sanctuary screen, the original high altar ensemble surviving intact behind the screen.

Living in the Presence of Christ St John Henry Newman

True faith is what may be called colourless, like air or water; it is but the medium through which the soul sees Christ; and the soul as little really rests upon it and contemplates it as the eye can see the air … As God’s grace elicits our faith, so His holiness stirs our fear, and His glory kindles our love.

Others may say of us ‘here is faith’, and ‘there is conscientiousness’, and ‘there is love’; but we can only say ‘this is God’s grace’, and ‘that is his holiness’, and ‘that is his glory’.

And this being the difference between true faith and self-contemplation, no wonder that where the thought of self obscures the thought of God, prayer and praise languish, and only preaching flourishes. Divine worship is simply contemplating our Maker, Redeemer, Sanctifier, and Judge; but discoursing, conversing, making speeches, arguing, reading, and writing about religion tend to make us forget Him in ourselves. The Ancients worshipped; they went out of their own minds into the Infinite Temple which was around them. They saw Christ in the Gospels, in the Creed, in the Sacraments and other Rites; in the visible structure and ornaments of His House, in the Altar, and in the Cross; and, not content with giving the service of their eyes, they gave Him their voices, their bodies, and their time, gave up their July/August 2020

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rest by night and their leisure by day, all that could evidence the offering of their hearts to Him …

Unwavering, unflagging, not urged by fits and starts, not heralding forth their feelings, but resolutely, simply, perseveringly, day by day, Sunday and weekday, fast-day and festival, week by week, season by season, year by year, in youth and in age, through a life, thirty years, forty years, fifty years, in prelude of the everlasting chant before the Throne – so they went on ‘continuing instant in prayer’, after the pattern of Psalmists and Apostles, in the day with David, in the night with Paul and Silas, winter and summer, in heat and in cold, in peace and in danger, in a prison or in a cathedral, in the dark, in the day-break, at sun-rising, in the forenoon, at noon, in the afternoon, at eventide and at going to rest, still they had Christ before them; His thought in their mind, His emblems in their eye, His name in their mouth, His service in their posture, magnifying Him, and calling on all that lives to magnify Him, joining with Angels in Heaven and Saints in Paradise to bless and praise Him for ever and ever … from Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification (1874) 11

IN PRAISE OF CONFESSION

Survivors of Abuse Finding Healing

Mr Parker said: ‘The Hon Simone McGurk MLA is not listening to survivors’ lived realities and how our stories can help to protect children today and into the future. It is commonly known that perpetrators don't talk about abuse in the confessional. But many survivors do.

The confessional remains the only place that a vulnerable child or adult victim can easily access without cost to talk with anonymity and privacy about their present or past trauma’. As a non-Catholic teenager, Parker used the confessional to first disclose his extensive history of childhood sexual abuse. ‘I was a suicidal teenager. I had no one to turn to who would let me talk at my pace and respect my need at that time for utter privacy.

It was the kindness and empathy of a Catholic priest that literally saved my life.’ Two decades later, Parker's witness was fundamental in convicting a serial paedophile. ‘Without the Seal of Confession, I would never have begun my journey of recovery, which would have left a prolific child abuser roaming free even today to continue molesting children. Many victims tell me they feel betrayed and want the Minister to concentrate on bolstering support for survivors rather than threatening and policing a critical private space which many survivors use and have used to find hope and healing.’

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Aboriginal woman, RB, a 26-year old non-Catholic, speaks of despair and being ‘retraumatised’ by the Minister's proposals. ‘In 2020, where else can an Aboriginal child or teenager go within their community setting and find a totally confidential listening ear to talk to about abuse while remaining

side? If we aren’t strengthened inside of ourselves, which is what confession has done and does for me continually, then how are we going to start building up the confidence and courage to be able to report past crimes to the police and then have the inner strength to deal with the pressure and stress of any potential

© H Zell

Non-Catholic and Catholic survivors are presently petitioning members of Western Australia’s Legislative Council to reject proposed amendments to the Children and Community Services Act which will ’require’ Catholic priests to report knowledge of child sexual abuse when received during confession. James Parker, 52, who runs peer support groups for child abuse survivors in Western Australia, describes proposed legislation as a ‘betrayal of every survivor’s journey of recovery’.

A Confessional in the Cathedral of Santa Maria Matricolare in Verona

completely anonymous? What looks like a visible win for the government will be a complete catastrophe for survivors. This will have abusers rubbing their hands with glee. They keep winning, courtesy of the government, and the vulnerable lose once again. It seems to me that the State Minister for Child Protection really doesn't care.

Can’t she and her advisers see that this is children’s lives and trauma they're messing with? It’s obvious that this [amendment] will lead to more mental illness, addiction and even suicides.’

Twenty-seven-year old survivor, SM, who is Catholic, says that the proposals are increasing his anxiety, making him feel ‘totally betrayed and abandoned by this government on so many levels. We, the abuse victims, are being frightened away from going to confession.

Shouldn’t the government be on our

court proceedings? The thought of losing the security and safety of the Seal of Confession brings me to tears. Where else do I turn? Where else will provide me with what I need to begin the process to inner healing?’

Eighteen-year old, SR, who regularly uses the confessional, comments that: ‘This is the safest place for me to talk about my past abuse. Can’t we get them to stop this stupid law?’ Survivors are calling on Members of the Legislative Council to set up a Select Committee before amending the Children and Community Services Act so that their first-hand experiences can be given careful consideration, their insights into child safety and best practice can be heard, and their journeys of recovery can be respected rather than jeopardised by ’ill-informed politicians’.

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WESTMINSTER PUT ON THE SPOT

Northern Ireland Has Spoken; Will MPs Listen?

Lord Alton

Whilst the Assembly’s vote will not directly change the law in Northern Ireland, it has sent a very strong message to the UK Government, MPs and Peers at Westminster that Northern Ireland rejects these regulations being imposed on the Province. This will make it much more difficult for Parliamentarians to vote to impose these regulations on Northern Ireland when they have been resoundingly rejected by the elected representatives of the people of the Six Counties. If MPs and Peers vote down the redrafted regulations, the UK Government will then be forced to draft the regulations for a third time, to be either less extreme or bring forward legislation allowing Parliament to vote on revoking the regulations. The second of those options would give back control to the people of Northern Ireland through its Assembly.

Stormont having been restored for over five months, it is vital that the people of Northern Ireland have a say on their country's new abortion framework through their elected representatives in the Northern Irish Assembly. It’s time to end this blatant undermining of devolution and hand back control on this devolved issue to Northern Ireland’.

© Tony Hisgett

The Northern Ireland Assembly has recently voted 46:40 to oppose the UK Government’s abortion regulations, which have been imposed on Northern Ireland by Westminster. The motion which passed was tabled in response to Heidi Crowter, the 24-year-old disability campaigner, who has spoken out against the proposal of the UK Government to impose on Northern Ireland abortion up to birth in cases of disabilities like Heidi’s own, Down’s syndrome. MPs and Peers at the UK Parliament are now due to vote on whether to approve or reject regulations that introduce an extreme abortion regime to Northern Ireland – and once again to ignore the views of the devolved Assembly.

The Stormont Estate, home of the Northern Irish Assembly

Polling organised by the University of Liverpool and Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council has shown that 58% of Sinn Féin voters and 54% of DUP voters want their country's new abortion framework to only allow abortions when the mother's life is at risk. Spokesperson for Right to Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said: ‘This vote has made it clear that the UK Government must urgently hand back this devolved matter to the elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland at the Assembly. The UK Government and Westminster now have absolutely no mandate whatsoever to impose these extreme regulations on Northern Ireland. Seventy-nine per cent of respondents to the Government consultation on these regulations were opposed to any abortion provision in Northern Ireland beyond what was previously permitted. Only 5% of all voters support introducing abortion through to 24 weeks, which is in line with what the Government will be introducing to Northern Ireland. This polling shows a clear rejection from the people of Northern Ireland for the UK Government's regulations. If the devolution settlement is to be respected, the cross-community view against this extreme abortion framework must be respected. With July/August 2020

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OUR CATHOLIC UNDERSTANDING

This is Our Faith, this is the Faith of the In the last few weeks, international protests have been seen in reaction to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. As part of the reaction, Oremus takes the opportunity to revisit the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) and rediscover the Church’s faith and teaching about what it is to be human, to be male or female and to be given stewardship of the earth by God. We begin in Section 2, commenting on the Article of the Apostles’ Creed: I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Paragraph 6 is entitled, simply ‘Man’.

355 ‘God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.’

Man occupies a unique place in creation: (I) he is ‘in the image of God’; (II) in his own nature he unites the spiritual and material worlds; (III) he is created male and female’; (IV) God established him in his friendship.

I. IN THE IMAGE OF GOD 356 Of all visible creatures only man is ‘able to know and love his creator’. He is ‘the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake’, and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity: What made you establish man in so great a dignity?

Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself! You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good.

357 Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of selfpossession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. and he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.

358 God created everything for man, but man in turn was created to serve and love God and to offer all creation back to him: What is it that is about to be created, that enjoys such honour? It is man that great and wonderful living creature, more precious in the eyes of God than all other creatures! For him the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the rest of creation exist. God attached so much importance to his salvation that he did not spare his own 14

© Catholic Truth Society

Quotations from Scripture and Church Documents are in quotation marks; italicised text comes from the writings of the saints and Church Fathers. References to ‘Man’ are to humanity in general and also to the individual human person.

Son for the sake of man. Nor does he ever cease to work, trying every possible means, until he has raised man up to himself and made him sit at his right hand.

359 ‘In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.’

St Paul tells us that the human race takes its origin from two men: Adam and Christ … the first man, Adam, he says, became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. the first Adam was made by the last Adam, from whom he also received his soul, to give him life … the second Adam stamped his image on the first Adam when he created him. That is why he took on himself the role and the name of the first Adam, in order that he might not lose what he had made in his own image. the first Adam, the last Adam: the first had a beginning, the last knows no end. the last Adam is indeed the first; as he himself says: ‘I am the first and the last.’

360 Because of its common origin the human race forms a unity, for ‘from one ancestor (God) made all nations to inhabit the whole earth: O wondrous vision, which makes us contemplate the human race in the unity of its origin in God … in the unity of its nature, composed equally in all men of a material body and a spiritual soul; in the unity of its immediate end and its mission in the world; in the unity of its dwelling, the earth, whose benefits all men, by right of nature, may use to sustain and develop life; in the unity of its supernatural end: God himself, to whom all ought to tend; in the unity of the means for attaining this end; … in the unity of the redemption wrought by Christ for all.

361 ‘This law of human solidarity and charity,’ without excluding the rich variety of persons, cultures and peoples, assures us that all men are truly brethren.

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OUR CATHOLIC UNDERSTANDING

Church (I) II. BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE

III. MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED THEM

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that: ‘then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.’ Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

Equality and difference willed by God

363 In Sacred Scripture the term ‘soul’ often refers to human life or the entire human person. But ‘soul’ also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God's image: ‘soul’ signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 The human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God’: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit: Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honour since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not ‘produced’ by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.

367 Sometimes the soul is distinguished from the spirit: St Paul for instance prays that God may sanctify his people ‘wholly’, with ‘spirit and soul and body’ kept sound and blameless at the Lord's coming. The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul.

‘Spirit’ signifies that from creation man is ordered to a supernatural end and that his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God. 368 The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one's being, where the person decides for or against God. July/August 2020

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369 Man and woman have been created, which is to say, willed by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman. ‘Being man’ or ‘being woman’ is a reality which is good and willed by God: man and woman possess an inalienable dignity which comes to them immediately from God their Creator. Man and woman are both with one and the same dignity ‘in the image of God’.

In their ‘being-man’ and ‘being-woman’, they reflect the Creator's wisdom and goodness.

370 In no way is God in man's image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective ‘perfections’ of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband.

‘Each for the other’ – ‘A unity in two’ 371 God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. The Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. ‘It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.’ None of the animals can be man's partner. The woman God ‘fashions’ from the man's rib and brings to him elicits on the man's part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’

Man discovers woman as another ‘I’, sharing the same humanity.

372 Man and woman were made ‘for each other’ - not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be ‘helpmate’ to the other, for they are equal as persons (‘bone of my bones. . .’) and complementary as masculine and feminine. In marriage God unites them in such a way that, by forming ‘one flesh’, they can transmit human life: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.’ By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents co-operate in a unique way in the Creator's work.

373 In God's plan man and woman have the vocation of ‘subduing’ the earth as stewards of God. This sovereignty is not to be an arbitrary and destructive domination.

God calls man and woman, made in the image of the Creator ‘who loves everything that exists’, to share in his providence toward other creatures; hence their responsibility for the world God has entrusted to them.

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CATHEDRAL HISTORY

The Arts and Crafts Men Patrick Rogers

© Fr Lawrence Lew OP

The Arts and Crafts Movement, originating in mid-19th century Britain with the ideas of John Ruskin, believed that industrialisation and mechanisation dehumanised those involved and debased craftsmanship.

The Movement advocated individualism and creativity in art and design, and a return to traditional materials and working methods. Robert Anning Bell RA was experienced in art and architecture, and a designer of stained glass, mosaics, fabrics and wallpaper. In 1900-01 he had produced a 32ft by 10ft mosaic for

Our Lady by Anning Bell, the focus of the Lady Chapel

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© Fr Lawrence Lew OP

The decoration of the Cathedral in the period 1912-16 was largely the work of members of the Arts and Crafts Movement, notably Robert Anning Bell and Robert Weir Schultz. Eric Gill was also associated with the Movement, though he had distanced himself by the time he produced the Stations of the Cross. Their work is among the best in the Cathedral.

The mosaic over the west doors; should it have been brighter in colour?

the façade of the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, South London. He was Professor of Art at Liverpool University when John Marshall, the Cathedral Architect and a fellow Nonconformist, approached him.

The walls of the Lady Chapel ha been clad with marble in 1908, but although a carved white marble frame had been put up above the altar, it was empty of any altarpiece and the conches above the four marble-clad wall niches were also undecorated.

At Marshall’s request, Anning Bell produced a mosaic design for the altarpiece portraying Our Lady standing and holding the Holy Child Jesus. The cost of the mosaic would be £120.

For the conches he portrayed Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezechiel, all Old Testament prophets who had foreseen the Incarnation. The predominantly blue mosaics were installed were installed in 1912-13, under the supervision of Anning Bell and Marshall. The traditional, direct method was employed by the experienced

mosaicist Gertrude Martin, who had worked for George Bridge on the mosaics of the Holy Souls Chapel 10 years earlier.

The mosaics were generally praised and, although Cardinal Bourne himself was disappointed, he agreed that Anning Bell should design the mosaic over the main entrance to the Cathedral. Bentley had provided a small sketch in pencil for this in 189596 and Marshall had worked this up in colour in 1907. The sketches were very largely followed by Anning Bell, but the open book with the words (in Latin): ‘I am the gate, if anyone enters by me, he shall be saved’ is a new theme and the mosaic is considerably simpler and more austere, with more subdued colours, than in the earlier designs. It is clear that Anning Bell devoted considerable thought to it, rejecting gold as liable to frost damage and bright colours as too great a contrast with the background.

The mosaic, grouted up to a level surface, was installed in 1915-16 by Oremus

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© Fr Lawrence Lew OP

CATHEDRAL HISTORY

St Andrew on the west wall of his chapel in a verdant landscape

Meanwhile other members of the Arts and Crafts Movement were at work in St Andrew’s Chapel. Robert Weir Schultz (Schultz Weir from 1915) was architect to the 4th Marquess of Bute, who had sent him to study Byzantine architecture in Greece. The Marquess had offered to pay for the decoration of St Andrew’s Chapel, providing that Schultz designed and supervised this. The mosaics on the far wall portray cities connected with St Andrew’s life – a fisherman born in Bethsaida, later Bishop of Constantinople, finally crucified in Patras, Greece. The near wall follows the journey of his relics, after being seized in Constantinople in 1204 by members of the Fourth Crusade, to Milan, Amalfi and, of course, St Andrews in Scotland. The mosaics were generally praised, notably in Country Life magazine, and cost £3,617.

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Besides Schultz himself, other Arts and Crafts colleagues who worked on the chapel were: George Jack (the mosaic cartoons), Thomas Stirling Lee (sculpture), Ernest Gimson (inlaid ebony stalls) and Sidney Barnsley (kneelers). Schultz’s designs were approved in 1910 and the mosaics installed in 1914-15 by six of Ernest Debenham’s group of mosaicists, directed by Gaetano Meo, using tesserae from both Venice and Powell

& Sons (red and gold). These were inserted by the traditional, direct method into cement of the same composition as used by Sir William Richmond in St Paul’s Cathedral. The mosaics are outstanding examples of quality and craftsmanship, particularly the shimmering fish-scales (or ‘golden clouds screening Paradise from earthly view’) on the vault and the arches where 33 birds perch amidst the foliage.

© Fr Lawrence Lew OP

James Powell & Sons of Whitefriars, who also replaced the mosaics in the Sacred Heart Shrine at this time.

The fish-scale mosaic of the vault in St Andrew’s Chapel 17

MONTHLY ALBUM

Feel the love; don’t feel the statue We were advised by the bishops that closing the churches would be an easier task than reopening them, and so indeed it has turned out to be as we spent a week activating the prepared plan and checking to see what we might have missed. Some things come naturally to us as Catholics, like lighting candles at shrines. Now, that is fine, but not infrequently we touch the statues as well.

That now constitutes a particular risk, and so Our Lady of Westminster and St Peter have had to be, so to speak, barricaded in, whilst Our Lady of Perpetual Help is taking temporary leave of absence from the Cathedral until safer time returns.

Sedes sapientiae – the seat of wisdom The chair on the right is a good chair; you are very welcome to sit on it. The chair on the left is not a good chair; you should not sit on it. However, if you enter the Cathedral with a member of your household, then both chairs become good chairs and you can sit beside each other, although the other good chair in the row becomes not a good chair in that case, as there will be insufficient social distance from you. Got it? All clear? This is the reason why, if you enter the Cathedral, there will be not only the usual Security team on duty, but also Cathedral Chaplains and Stewards to assist you in case of puzzlement.

And, of course, you are always welcome to stand (at social distance) if sitting looks too dangerous.

Playpens of prayer?

When we started reorganising the chairs for social distance in the Cathedral, it began to look as if we were taking rather too seriously the Lord’s teaching about the Good Shepherd, the sheep and the door of the sheepfold. The building took on more and more the aspect of a livestock market, or, perhaps, a nursery school? We speculated whether people might come bringing young children and place them inside the pens whilst they themselves prayed, or wandered off to light a candle or two, whilst Maintenance lamented our lack of tape reading ‘Police Line – Do Not Cross’ At any rate, it was all done with the intention of keeping you as safe as possible.

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MONTHLY ALBUM

For prayer to St John Southworth Taking the opportunity, kindly offered by Fr Andrew on one of the Chaplains' Saturday Sacristy Working Parties, to clean candle stands, we noticed something that was not previously very apparent.

In the bottom centre of the image you will see that a step has been built out, and this seems to have been to enable people to kneel and pray before the relics of St John Southworth which are, of course, in St George’s Chapel. Our placing candle stands there is something that, really, we need to reconsider, so that the step may be restored to its original purpose of enabling devotion.

Artistry unnoticed To match the step in front of St John’s relics, there is also this wooden rail to support those who would pray there. As with other woodwork in the Cathedral, notably the choir stalls of the sanctuary, there is lovely marquetry decoration which can all too easily be missed. Many of the great medieval cathedrals of this country boast soaring canopies over their carved choir stalls, so Westminster can seem very plain by comparison, but here it is the small, often unobserved detail that shows the artistry.

The Cleaning Team, with a deep-cleaned St Peter In the week preceding the reopening of the Cathedral for private prayer, the opportunity was seized to undertake a deep clean of the building, something not undertaken for rather a long time. This is not a job for one or two people, but the team arrived, unpacked and set to systematically. We are grateful for their hard work and attention to nooks and crannies, so that we can keep the Cathedral a worthy and welcoming House of God.

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OUR PRAYER

‘Private, Individual Prayer’ St Cyprian

Above all, the Teacher of peace and Master of unity did not want prayer to be made singly and privately, so that whoever prayed would pray for himself alone. We do not say My Father, who art in heaven or Give me this day my daily bread; nor does each one ask that only his own debt should be forgiven him; nor does he request for himself alone that he may not be led into temptation but delivered from evil. Our prayer is public and common, and when we pray, we pray not for one person but for the whole people, since we, the whole people, are one.

The God of peace and the Master of concord, who taught unity, willed that one should pray for all, just as he himself, being one, carried us all. The three children observed this law when they were shut into the fiery furnace, praying with one voice and with one heart: thus our faith in divine Scripture teaches us, and, as it teaches us how such people prayed, gives us an example that we should follow in our own prayers, so that we may become like them: Then these three sang a hymn as if with one mouth, and blessed the Lord. They spoke as if with one mouth, even though Christ had not yet taught them how to pray.

And therefore, as they prayed, their prayers were heard and were fruitful, because a peaceful, sincere, and spiritual prayer deserved well from the Lord. Thus, too, we find the Apostles and the disciples praying after the Ascension of the Lord: They all continued with one accord in prayer, with the women and with Mary who was the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. They continued with one accord in prayer, showing, by the urgency and the unanimity of their praying, that God, who makes the inhabitants of a house to be of one mind, only admits to his divine and eternal home those among whom prayer is unanimous.

But, dear brethren – what deep blessings are contained in the Lord’s Prayer! How many they are, and how great, collected in so few words but so rich in spiritual power! There is nothing at all that is not to be found in these our prayers and petitions, as it were a compendium of heavenly doctrine. Thus, he said, you must pray: Our Father, who art in heaven.

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© British Museum

On the very day of our reopening the Cathedral ‘for private, individual prayer’, as we have been required to term it, the Divine Office which we pray coincidentally gave us this piece from St Cyprian, the North African Church Father, Bishop and Martyr. The saint reminds us that there is no such thing as ‘private, individual prayer’ for Christians.

St Cyprian in profile; an illustration to Thevet's Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres (Paris, 1584)

The new man, reborn and brought back to God by his grace, says Father at the very beginning, for he has just begun to be God’s son. He came to his own, and his own did not accept him. But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name.

Whoever believes in God’s name and has become his son, should start here so that he can give thanks and profess himself to be God’s son, by calling God his Father in heaven.

How great is the Lord’s indulgence! How kindly he bends down to us, how he overflows with goodness towards us!

For he wishes us to pray in the sight of God in such a way as to call God Father and to call ourselves sons of God, just as Christ is the Son of God. No-one would have dared to claim such a name in prayer, unless he himself had given us permission to pray this. And so, beloved brethren, we should know and remember that when we call God our Father, we must behave as children of God, so that whatever pleasure we take in having God for our Father, he may take the same pleasure in us.

Let us behave like temples of God, so that it may be clear that God dwells in us. Let our doings not fall away from the Spirit, but let us, who have begun to be heavenly and spiritual, consider and do nothing but heavenly and spiritual things. As the Lord God himself has said: Those who honour me, I will honour them; but those who despise me will be despised. And the blessed apostle has also said in his letters: You are not your own property: you have been bought at a great price. Glorify God and carry him in your bodies. from St Cyprian’s Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer Oremus

July/August 2020

THE FRIENDS OF WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL

Feeling our Way to the New Normal

‘So now we know why Schubert never finished his Unfinished Symphony. He would have written more, but the clock struck four, and everything stops for tea’ (Popular song)

Christina White Day One. I set up the Friends’ Office in my kitchen. I realised that our Friends’ Facebook Page was our best means of contacting people and so I started posting whatever seemed relevant: information from the Cathedral, details of the forthcoming live-streaming of Masses, and news from the Vatican.

It became clear immediately that we were reaching out to people across Europe, not just the United Kingdom.

Mike from Germany got in touch to say how much he loved Westminster Cathedral, how he always visited on trips to London and looked forward to the day when he could walk through the doors again. I asked him to post about his experience of lockdown in Germany. Some people were not taking it seriously, he said. The young boasted about going to Corona parties – getting the virus over and done with – but the majority stuck by the rules. There was genuine fear and apprehension. Marco posted from Rome. Every night we were watching the scenes from Italy with growing concern and it was moving to see Friends interact with him; was he ok, how was he coping? He said the Italians were looking forward to freedom. We loved the videos from Italy showing neighbours singing to each other.

July/August 2020

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Many people have been forced into isolation, and in a small way the page provided and continues to provide a vital contact with the real world. Our coffee and tea breaks have become a ‘thing’. I dug out my mum’s 1960s tea set to liven up my tea pictures and our cat Finn acquired his own level of feline celebrity. His new-found hunting skills earned him a degree of notoriety and I nicknamed him ‘Lord Riot’. Soon the page acquired its own momentum with the regulars posting pictures of coffee and cake that had been made. Flour was more precious than gold and Friends shared their culinary successes.

There was an immediate response when the Cathedral live-stream Masses started, with some niggles too: congregants complained about buffering, they couldn’t find the link, were the Masses recorded? Gradually the hiccups were ironed out – not perfect – and a ritual of Masses, of prayer and reflection was established.

The Cardinal has never been better speaking to his people over the Easter Triduum. We all felt that he ‘got it’, that he understood what people were feeling.

Easter coincided with rising death tolls in the UK. Many of us wept watching the live pictures from the Vatican of the Pope in the rain, alone, elevating the Blessed Sacrament to the world. Posts were shared quoting the late, great St John Paul II: ‘We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song!’

Our membership of the Friends’ page began to climb. The aim is obviously to increase membership proper, and we offered the Facebook Friends a chance to join the Friends with a £10 rate for 12 months. With all events cancelled, there was little to entice. Over 200 people have joined the page with a 10% take-up of membership. I think people wanted to belong to something; to feel a connection with the Cathedral, even though the doors were closed. As the weeks have gone by, I have crossed off in my diary all the events that should

have happened. The tours to Tonbridge and Tudeley; to Wonersh seminary; to the Beth Chatto garden; and then the Wallace Collection.

The brilliant Professor Diane Purkiss, who gave a talk to the Friends in February (our last real event), asked her daughter to record her reading a poem about the destruction of the Walsingham Shrine: iconoclasm against a backdrop of birdsong and blooming roses. Our brilliant Head Sacristan Richard Hawker responded to the clamour for posts about vestments with a lovely quirky series ‘From the Sacristy’. Dr Rory O’Donnell excelled with posts of elegant tea settings, and historical snippets on all the places we should have visited.

To date, we have arranged two quizzes online, aided and abetted by the chaplains, with Fr Daniel as quizmaster.

Former chaplains, distributed the length and breadth of the diocese, soon cottoned on and gentle ecclesiastical ribbing ensued. At the time of writing the Cathedral remains closed and our focus must remain online. The Assistant Master of Music, Peter Stevens, is putting together an online organ recital. An online tour of the Cathedral is also in the offing. The Friends’ Council has met via Zoom; sub-committees have planned future activity. We cannot predict the world post-Covid 19, but it seems likely that social distancing will remain for some time. There will be a natural resistance to avoid crowds. The new normal will not be the old, but Friendship will remain.

Contact us • Write to: Friends’ Office, 42 Francis Street, London SW1P 1QW • Call: 020 7798 9059 • Email: friends@ westminstercathedral.org.uk Registered Charity number 272899

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A MAN TO BE PRAISED

A Great King – Alfred (849 – 899) Dr Michael Straiton KCSG

'Alfred caused me to be made' says the inscription in Latin on this late 9th century jewel found in 1693 in Somerset near Athelney, where Alfred famously hid during his campaign against the Danes

Alfred, King of Wessex, is the only Englishman ever to have been dubbed ‘the Great’, an epithet shared by only 20 or so individuals throughout history.

With meagre resources and severe setbacks, he conquered his formidable foes, the invading pagan Danes, to save his kingdom from almost certain oblivion. His territory was small - that part of England south of the River Thames. Remembered by generations as ‘the king who burned the cakes’, Alfred was an outstanding personality and brave warrior who also became a prominent scholar, administrator and international figure who revived Christianity in England and to whom can be ascribed the foundation of English monarchy.

When Alfred came to the throne, Western Christendom was besieged on all sides and was reduced by incursions of barbarians from the north and east, and Moslems from the south. What then remained of Christian Europe was the majority of Italy, France, a strip of

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northern Spain, the recently converted valley of the Rhine, Ireland and England. The Northumbrian historian St Bede the Venerable wrote circa 730 that the Anglo-Saxons regarded themselves as being one people. There was even a title for the paramount ruler, Bretwalda, with a vague primacy which was largely personal. Roughly, the settlement in Kent emerged as the strongest kingdom by the late sixth century, the Northumbrians and East Angles in the seventh, the Mercians of middle England in the course of the eighth, while the ninth century was dominated by the kingdom of Wessex.

The most important city in Wessex was Winchester, a day’s march inland from the south coast.

Alfred’s grandfather, Egbert, entrusted the education of his son and heir, Ethelwulf, to Swithin, Bishop of Winchester. Ethelwulf was deeply religious, with a particular devotion to the Holy See, and his sons grew up in

this atmosphere. Ethelwulf’s youngest son, Alfred, was born at a royal residence at the foot of the Berkshire Downs at Wantage. Extraordinary as it seems, Ethelwulf sent Alfred all the way to Rome when he was only four years old; a letter survives in which Pope Leo IV tells Ethelwulf that he has received his little son and invested him with the insignia and vestments of the consulship of Rome. Alfred’s mother, Osburh, also renowned for her piety, showed an illuminated book of Saxon poems to her sons, saying that she would give it to whichever of them could learn to read it first. Alfred was much more eager than his elder brothers and, finding someone to teach him how to read it aloud, carried off the prize.

A few years later Ethelwulf himself took Alfred to Rome and they were away from home for two years, the king entrusting the government of Wessex to his two eldest sons, Ethelbald in the Oremus

July/August 2020

A MAN TO BE PRAISED Wales, who was to write the king’s biography. Alfred was personally involved in the translation into English of many Latin texts, such as The Soliloquies of St Augustine, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and the Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory the Great, which he distributed throughout Wessex.

Such works formed the core of a curriculum for the school established at his court, the aim of which was to give proficiency in English to laymen, and to train in Latinity those wishing to enter the Church. He achieved all this in spite of suffering from a painful and recurring malady, the nature of which is unknown, but could have been a chronic peptic ulcer.

Following Ethelwulf’s death in 858, his three elder sons reigned over the next 13 years. The Danes made steady advances, taking Kent and then York, making the English chieftains in the North their vassals. In 870, with the greatest host they had ever assembled, the Danes took East Anglia, then proceeded south to mop up what was left. They were checked by the English in the Valley of the White Horse at the Battle of Ashdown. Shortly after this, the third of Ethelwulf’s sons died and Alfred, who had distinguished himself in the battle, was chosen king and leader of Wessex by acclamation.

But the first seven years of Alfred’s reign were perilous in the extreme. It looked as if the pagan Danes under their leader Guthrum would destroy all remaining opposition. Many of Alfred’s supporters and landowners fled to France, and by 877 he had hardly any territory at all and was obliged to retire to the Isle of Athelney in the far marshes of Somerset. To this period belongs the famous story of the cakes, by which Alfred is chiefly remembered.

It would seem that, while sheltering in a herdsman’s cottage, he was asked to watch the cakes that were being baked.

Alfred, preoccupied with his military problems and mending his weapons, forgot all about them and they were badly burned. Not knowing who he was, the angry housewife upbraided him, but he meekly took the scolding.

Guthrum kept to his agreement to keep within the Danelaw, but after his death in 892 a great new army of Danes appeared under their leader Haesten who, forced out of France, had sailed from Boulogne for England.

Alfred was better prepared this time with his fortified burghs, fleet of ships and reorganized army, and the foe was defeated. He captured Haesten’s wife and children after the final battle, but chivalrously returned them unharmed to their father.

In the spring of 878 Alfred summoned the remaining lords and freemen to join him. He marched directly to where the Danish host was concentrated, around Chippenham.

The two forces engaged in the July/August 2020

Oremus

© Svitapeneela

west and Ethelbert in Kent. Their time in Rome must have made an immense impression on Alfred. When they arrived, Pope Leo IV was fortifying the area around St Peter’s outside Rome’s city walls, (known since as the Leonine City) that had been sacked by Saracen pirates a few years before. Ethelwulf himself undertook the restoration of the Saxon Hostel (now the Borgo in Sassia on the left when approaching St Peter’s) which had been burned down by the Saracens. Alfred would have noted that Pope Leo, observing that sea power was essential in repelling his seafaring enemies, had built a port near Rome on the coast at Civita Vecchia to house his navy.

Alfred, in Trinity Church Square, Southwark

neighbourhood of Eddington, near Westbury and Alfred gained a complete victory, driving Guthrum and his host back into Chippenham. After a fortnight’s siege, the Danes capitulated and the great mark of their surrender was that Alfred insisted on Guthrum’s being baptised, standing himselfas godfather. The Battle of Eddington was followed by the Treaty of Wedmore, which was the turning point in the story of the Danish invasions. The Danes agreed to stay beyond a line drawn east of London and then north along Watling Street, their territory to the east being known as the Danelaw. By this means Alfred compelled Guthrum and his leaders to accept Christian civilization. He also built a series of fortified towns known as burghs and increased his naval strength to secure his hard-won position.

Once Wessex had been saved from the Danes, Alfred set himself the task of restoring religion and learning to his kingdom, following the example of the Emperor Charlemagne who, a century before, had gathered scholars to his court for that purpose. Alfred invited distinguished men to Winchester, such as Grimbald of Saint-Bertin from France, Plegmund, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Wærfrith, Bishop of Worcester and the monk Asser from

Alfred the Great can be seen as the real founder of the English monarchy, with his son and grandson adding the Midlands and the North to the kingdom of Wessex. A truly European figure, he sent alms to Rome as ‘Peter’s Pence’ and further afield to the Patriarch Elias of Jerusalem and even to the shrines of Ss Thomas and Bartholomew in India.

The most generally accepted date of Alfred’s death is 26 October 899 and his last recorded activity was meeting with King Ethelred of Mercia and Bishop Plegmund at Chelsea to plan the rebuilding of London. An AngloNorman scholar of the 12th century, Geoffrey Gaimer, wrote of Alfred: ‘He reigned well for 28 years; there are few such men living, for he was a wise and good warrior. He knew well how to curb his enemies; there was no better scholar than he, for he had learned from infancy. He caused English books to be written, of deeds and laws, of battles in the land against kings who made war, and many books which learned men wish to read. May God and the kind lady St Mary have mercy on his soul’.

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AT THE CARDINAL HUME CENTRE

Maintaining Essential Services George O’Neill Wednesday 17 June marked the 21st anniversary of Cardinal Hume’s death.

Thinking of him reminded me of a story I was told, about how he would start tours for young priests outside Westminster Cathedral, rather than inside the building. He did this to be amongst the people who were homeless and slept near its steps. I am told that he was not asked for money – people knew he didn’t have any – but they would ask for what he could give: a prayer or a blessing.

When the Cardinal talked of homelessness, he reminded people that behind every face is a story, that every person is: ‘precious in the eyes of God and thus must be precious in ours’. In Westminster, a borough with some of the highest rates of homelessness and where more than a third of children

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live in poverty, we have to continue to support families and young people as they feel the strains of homelessness, unemployment, social distancing and confinement in sometimes appalling overcrowded or poorly maintained accommodation.

In the first eight weeks of the lockdown, the Centre provided specialist advice to nearly 350 people, and 338 vulnerable people were helped with supermarket vouchers.

Among them, a family fleeing domestic abuse, a homeless expectant mother sleeping on the sofas of friends, as well as a mother struggling to secure long overdue funding for her severely disabled child. These are all fraught enough problems to tackle, without the additional strain of Covid-19. The Centre has also continued to be a

home for 36 young people who might otherwise be homeless, providing round the clock support.

As the economic impact sets in, it seems that for some the problems have only just begun. We expect an increase in need, and whilst the way the Cardinal Hume Centre works will adapt, our belief in the value, dignity and potential of every individual will not. In a speech on 25 March 1994, the Cardinal noted that: ‘The Centre is the product of a lot of effort and many acts of generosity by individuals and groups of people’; as the world struggles to adapt to the current pandemic, this encouragement is needed again. We have to remind ourselves that each individual life must be accorded full protection and respect. I hope you can join us and other forces for good, as we all try to make this a reality.

Oremus

July/August 2020

CATHEDRAL HISTORY

CATHEDRAL HISTORY – A PICTORIAL RECORD

Mass Celebrated in an Overflowing Sanctuary, July 1975

The Eucharistic Prayer

Paul Tobin There is little supporting reference to this particular Mass celebrated by Cardinal John Carmel Heenan (Archbishop of Westminster 1963 - 1975) some four months before his death in November of that year. It is thought that that this particular event was organized by the Catholic Renewal Movement.

Anthony Howe, and next to him is Fr (later Canon) Vincent Berry, whose death occurred last month. In image 2, at the Presentation of the Offerings for Mass, the priest standing to the left of the two servers is Fr William Brennan, Cathedral Chaplain and Assistant Master of Ceremonies.

In a scene that is unlikely ever to occur again, the Sanctuary is just about full to bursting point with people leaning against the High Altar. The author was informed that at the time the throne was occupied by two Religious Sisters for the duration of the Mass, as the Cardinal used the faldstool in front of the altar instead. The Cardinal, allegedly, was none too impressed by the person who stood at the ambo and spoke ‘in tongues’.

In image 1, during the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest to the right of the Cardinal, in glasses, is Fr Patrick (now Bishop) O’Donoghue. To the Cardinal’s left is the MC, Mgr

The Offerings are presented for Mass

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July/August 2020

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25

DIARY

The Communion of St Bonaventure by Nicola Grassi in the sacristy of San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

Monday 6 July

The Months of

St Maria Goretti, Virgin & Martyr

July/August

Tuesday 7 July

The Holy Father’s Prayer Intention July - Universal Our Families: We pray that today’s families may be accompanied with love, respect and guidance.

DEDICATION OF THE CATHEDRAL (1910) 5.30pm Sung Mass Organ: Vierne – Carillon de Westminster

Friday 3 July

ST THOMAS, Apostle

Ps Week 1 Friday abstinence

Wednesday 8 July

Feria (St Lawrence of Brindisi, Priest & Doctor)

Thursday 9 July

ST MARY MAGDALENE

Wednesday 22 July

St Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions, Martyrs

Friday 10 July Feria

Friday abstinence

ST BRIDGET OF SWEDEN, Patron of Europe

Saturday 11 July Sunday 12 July

Ps Week 3 15th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 10.30am Sung Mass Organ: J S Bach – Prelude in E minor BWV 548 4.30pm Solemn Vespers (English) and Benediction (Latin) Organ: J S Bach – Fugue in E minor BWV 548

Feria (St Henry)

Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday (St Elizabeth of Portugal)

Portrait of St Bridget attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder

Tuesday 14 July

Feria (St Camillus de Lellis, Priest)

Wednesday 15 July

St Bonaventure, Bishop & Doctor

© Rvalette

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

The statue of St John Vianney in the cathedral of Narbonne Ps Week 2 14th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 10.30am Sung Mass Organ: Schmidt – Prelude and Fugue in D ‘Hallelujah!’

4.30pm Solemn Vespers (English) and Benediction (Latin) Organ: Buxtehude – Praeludium in F sharp minor BuxWV 146

Friday 17 July

Feria

Friday abstinence

Saturday 18 July

Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday

Sunday 19 July

Friday 24 July

Friday abstinence Feria (St Sharbel Makhluf, Priest)

Saturday 25 July

ST JAMES, Apostle

Thursday 16 July

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Thurday 23 July

Monday 13 July

Saturday 4 July

Sunday 5 July

Feria (St Apollinaris, Bishop & Martyr)

ST BENEDICT, Abbot, Patron of Europe

Wednesday 1 July

Feria

Monday 20 July Tuesday 21 July

Feria

Feria

August – Universal The Maritime World: We pray for all those who work and live from the sea, among them sailors, fishermen and their families.

Thursday 2 July

© Didier Descouens

2020

St Bonaventure (1221-74, feast day 15 July) was given the baptismal name of John. Subsequently falling dangerously ill, his mother pleaded with St Francis to pray for him, which the saint did. Prophetically foreseeing the child’s life, the saint exclaimed: 'O Buona ventura' (O good fortune!) and the name stuck. Joining the Franciscan Order, he studied in Paris, enjoying the friendship of the king, St Louis, and the great St Thomas Aquinas, in company with whom he received his doctorate. Within 13 years of entering the Order, he became its General, being noted for restoring a general peace after a time of internal dissension. We might have had him as Archbishop of York, had Pope Clement IV had his way, but instead he was kept close to Rome as Cardinal Bishop of Albano, in which post he died.

© Thiel Gallery

JUL/AUG

Ps Week 4 16th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 10.30am Sung Mass Organ: Widor – Moderato (Symphonie VII) 4.30pm Solemn Vespers (English) and Benediction (Latin) Organ: J S Bach – Wir gläuben all an einen Gott BWV 680

Sunday 26 July

Ps Week 1 10.30am Sung Mass Organ: J S Bach – Prelude in C minor BWV 546 4.30pm Solemn Vespers (English) and Benediction (Latin) Organ: J S Bach – Fugue in C minor BWV 546

Monday 27 July Feria

Tuesday 28 July Feria

Wednesday 29 July St Martha

Oremus

July/August 2020

DIARY AND NOTICES Thurday 30 July

Friday 14 August

Friday 31 July

Friday abstinence St Ignatius of Loyola, Priest

Saturday 15 August

Saturday 1 August

Sunday 16 August

St Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop & Doctor

Sunday 2 August

18th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 10.30am Sung Mass Organ: Vivaldi, arr. J S Bach – Concerto in C BWV 594 4.30pm Solemn Vespers (English) and Benediction (Latin) Organ: Couperin – Offertoire sur les grands jeux (Messe pour les Paroisses)

St Maximilian Mary Kolbe, Priest & Martyr

Feria

THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY 10.30am Sung Mass Organ: Tournemire – Paraphrase-Carillon (L’Orgue Mystique XXXV) 4.30pm Solemn Vespers (English) and Benediction (Latin) Organ: J S Bach – Fugue on the Magnificat BWV 733

Monday 17 August

Ps Week 4

The Beheading of the Baptist in St John Baptist Church, Madaba in Jordan

Tuesday 18 August Feria

Tuesday 4 August

St John Vianney, Priest

Wednesday 19 August

Feria (The Dedication of the Basilica of St Mary Major)

Thursday 20 August

Wednesday 5 August

Thursday 6 August

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE LORD

Friday 7 August

The Passion of St John the Baptist

Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday

Feria

Monday 3 August

Saturday 29 August

Feria (St John Eudes, Priest)

St Bernard, Abbot & Doctor

Friday 21 August

St Pius X, Pope

© Falcodigiada

Feria (St Peter Chrysologus, Bishop & Doctor)

Friday abstinence

Sunday 30 August Ps Week 2 22nd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 10.30am Sung Mass Organ: J S Bach – Fantasia in G minor BWV 542 4.30pm Solemn Vespers (English) and Benediction (Latin) Organ: J S Bach – Fugue in G minor BWV 542 Monday 31 August (Bank Holiday)

Feria (Ss Sixtus II, Pope, & Companions, Martyrs) (St Cajetan, Priest)

Saturday 22 August

Saturday 8 August

Sunday 23 August

Key to the Diary: Saints’ days and holy days written in BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS denote Sundays and Solemnities, CAPITAL LETTERS denote Feasts, and those not in capitals denote Memorials, whether optional or otherwise. Memorials in brackets are not celebrated liturgically.

Monday 24 August

What Happens and When

St Dominic, Priest

Sunday 9 August

Ps Week 3 19th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 10.30am Sung Mass Organ: Vierne – Allegro maestoso (Symphonie III) 4.30pm Solemn Vespers (English) and Benediction (Latin) Organ: J S Bach – Prelude in B minor BWV 544

Ps Week 1 21st SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 10.30am Sung Mass Organ: Widor – Marcia (Symphonie III) 4.30pm Solemn Vespers (English) and Benediction (Latin) Organ: J S Bach – Fugue in B minor BWV 544 ST BARTHOLOMEW, Apostle

Tuesday 25 August

Monday 10 August

ST LAWRENCE, Deacon and Martyr

Tuesday 11 August

Feria (St Louis) (St Joseph Calasanz, Priest)

Wednesday 26 August

St Clare, Virgin

Wednesday 12 August

Feria (St Jane Frances de Chantal)

Feria (Blessed Dominic of the Mother of God, Priest)

Thursday 27 August St Monica

Thursday 13 August

Feria (Ss Pontian, Pope, & Hippolytus, Priest, Martyrs) July/August 2020

The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Oremus

Friday 28 August Friday abstinence St Augustine, Bishop & Doctor

St Aidan, Bishop, and the Saints of Lindisfarne

When public liturgy and the celebration of Mass can be resumed, Cathedral opening hours and times of services will be published on the Cathedral website and via Social Media. Please be assured that all booked Mass intentions continue to be fulfilled by the Chaplains.

Throughout the Year

At the time of going to press it remains unclear when and where it will be possible for the various groups attached to the Cathedral to meet. As soon as information becomes known, it will be published in the weekly Newsletter and on the News pages of the Cathedral website. Thank you for your patience.

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CROSSWORD AND POEM

Binsey Poplars (felled 1879) Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, All felled, felled, are all felled; Of a fresh and following folded rank Not spared, not one That dandled a sandalled Shadow that swam or sank On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do When we delve or hew — Hack and rack the growing green!

Since country is so tender Alan Frost May 2020 – No. 79 To touch, her being só slender, Clues Across That, like this sleek and seeing ball 1 St Maria -------, young Italian virgin martyr, feast day 6 July (7) But a prick will make no eye at all, 6 Jan ---, Medieval Czech heretic, whose followers took his name (3) 8 Maid answering door to Peter when he had divinely escaped from Where we, even where we mean prison [Acts 12] (5) To mend her we end her, 9 Traditional chant at the beginning of Mass (7) 10 Precious link with the Cathedral and the month of July (5) When we hew or delve: 11 Fr John ------ SJ, wrote Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, After-comers cannot guess the beauty been. died 27 July 1637 (6) 13 See 20 Down Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve 15 Formal religious ceremony according to prescribed and established Strokes of havoc unselve order (6) 17 Saint and Pope of the 7th century (6) The sweet especial scene, 20 The Gordon -----, attacks by anti-Catholic mobs in London in Rural scene, a rural scene, 1780 (5) 21 Thrice daily devotion to Our Lady, commemorating the message Sweet especial rural scene. of Gabriel (7) 23 …..-Saxon, classification of most people in England pre-1066 (5) 24 Dona --- requiem sempiternam, ‘Grant them eternal rest’ (3) 25 Black body-length garment worn by priest (7)

ANSWERS Across: 1 Goretti 6 Hus 8 Rhoda 9 Introit 10 Blood 11 Gerard 13 Window 15 Ritual 17 Agatho 20 Riots 21Angelus 23 Anglo 24 Eis 25 Cassock Down: 1 Grainger 2 Rutter 3 Togo 4 Irate 5 Doubting 6 Harold 7 Sand 12 Roadsign 14 Woolsack 16 Thomas 18 Toledo 19 Havoc 20 Rose 22 Guys

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© Steve Roberts

Clues Down 1 Percy --------, composer of light works such as Handel in the Strand (8) 2 John ------, contemporary composer and conductor; founded the Cambridge Singers (6) 3 African country with no official religion (4) 4 In a state of high anger (5) 5 & 16 Down: Sceptic, so referred to after a chastened Apostle (8,6) 6 His successor was crowned King at Westminster Abbey in 1066 (6) 7 Feature of beach or desert (4) 12 Instruction or direction for the traveller (8) 14 On which, in the Palace of Westminster, the Lord Speaker sits (8) 16 See 5 Down 18 Spanish city famous for steel and paintings by El Greco (6) 19 ‘Cry ----- and let slip the dogs of war’, Mark Anthony after Caesar’s assassination (5) 20 & 13 Across: Spectacular circular structure, permitting light in gothic cathedrals (4,6) 22 Reference to men working in London NHS teaching hospital? (4) St Margaret’s Well was restored in 1874 by T J Prout, then Vicar of St Margaret’s church, Binsey

To submit a poem whether by yourself or another for consideration, please contact the Editor – details on page 3.

Oremus

July/August 2020

IMPRESSIONISTS EXHIBITED

Gauguin and a Lot More Gauguin and the Impressionists: Masterpieces from the Ordrupgaard Collection will showcase 60 works drawn from one of the finest collections of Impressionist paintings in northern Europe, assembled in the first decades of the 20th century by wealthy Danish couple Wilhelm and Henny Hansen.

The exhibition will include masterpieces

by Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. It will also feature precursors of Impressionism such as Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Jules Dupré and Charles-François Daubigny,and a number of Post-Impressionist works, including an exceptional group of eight paintings by Paul Gauguin. Many of the works in the collection have never been seen in the UK before.

Wilhelm Hansen was an insurance magnate who created a collection of French paintings between 1916 and the late 1920s.The First World War, during which Denmark remained neutral, gave Hansen the opportunity to buy important works from the most prestigious Parisian dealers including Paul Durand-Ruel and the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Hansen was already a keen collector of Danish 19th-century paintings but decided to acquire the best French painting ‘from Corot to Cézanne’, enlisting the help of French art critic and early champion of Impressionism Théodore Duret. The Hansens displayed their collection at Ordrupgaard, their house just outside Copenhagen, which they opened to the public in 1918. By then, their collection spanned Delacroix to Cézanne and was recognised by a French critic as ‘perhaps one of the richest and most complete collections outside France’ of 19thcentury French painting.

In 1951 Hansen's widow, Henny, bequeathed their home and collection to the Danish state, which turned it into a museum for the works in 1953.

This exhibition will be a unique opportunity to view these works in the UK while Ordrupgaard is closed for July/August 2020

Oremus

© Phoebe

The Royal Academy

Morning Sunlight on the Snow, Eragny-surEpte, 1895 by Camille Pissaro

the construction of a new wing. The exhibition will open with Painting en Plein Air featuring landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes mostly painted in and around Paris, the Normandy coast and London, showing how the Impressionists broke away from the classical Italianate landscapes. Included will be paintings of the forest of Fontainebleau where, in the 1860s, a new generation of painters such as Monet, Sisley and Renoir, went to paint en plein air. There will also be three works by Pissarro representing the landscape around his home in Eragny, as well as Sisley’s scenes of the banks of the Seine. This section will end with a group of cityscapes of London and Paris by Monet and Pissarro, who were inspired by the light and atmosphere of these modern cities.

Collecting French Masters will feature works by predecessors of Impressionism.

Advised by Duret, Hansen acquired paintings by important earlier 19thcentury painters including Jean-AugusteDominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Corot and Courbet. This gallery will partially reproduce one of Hansen’s original hangs based on archival

photographs. Most of the works will be featured, although he was forced to sell part of his collection when the Danish Landmandsbank collapsed in 1922.

Key early works will include Delacroix’s portrait George Sand, 1838; Courbet’s The Ruse, Roe Deer Hunting Episode (Franche-Comté), 1866; and eight works

by Corot, among them The Windmill, c. 1835-40. Impressionist Women will show portraits of women painted by Renoir and Degas as well as Morisot and Eva Gonzalès. In the late 1910s, the Hansens acquired paintings by Morisot and Gonzalès, whose work was less widely recognised, despite their important place within the movement.

The works show intimate and domestic scenes which reflect the constraints they faced as women artists at the time.

Key portraits will include Morisot’s Young Girl on the Grass(Mademoiselle Isabelle Lambert),1885; Gonzalès’ The Convalescent (Portrait of a Woman in White), 1877-78; and Renoir’s Portrait of a Romanian Lady (Madame Iscovesco), 1877.

The exhibition will end with Gauguin and Post-Impressionism, presenting works by artists who, at the turn of the century, reacted against Impressionism: Gauguin, Cézanne and Matisse.

Gauguin is one of the best represented artists in the collection and on display will be eight of his paintings spanning his career including Blue Trees, Your Turn Will Come, My Beauty!, 1888 and Portrait of a Young Girl Vaïte [Jeanne] Goupil,1896. Also included will be Cézanne’s Women Bathing, c. 1895, and Matisse’s Flowers and Fruits, 1909.

The exhibition is organised by Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen and the Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly. The RA is presently closed on account of the coronavirus, but is extending the exhibition until 18 October in the hope of reopening before then. In the meantime a taste of the paintings can be found here: https://www.royalacademy. org.uk/article/60-seconds-videogauguin-impressionists .

29

FIFTY AND ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

In retrospect: from the Cathedral Chronicle Parish Council Report

This began to be made clear at the last meeting of the Council on 4 June. When the members came to discuss a proposal from the Pastoral Council concerning First Confession and Communion it was revealed that nobody present had any children who qualified. What’s more, the only three married people present were, shall we say, so senior in wisdom and experience that the problem of young children was for them somewhat academic.

S.O.S. in the weekly Press for outside help. Comparisons, too, are rendered possible and interesting thereby. Again we find the church of Commercial Road, the ‘Cathedral of the East End’, well in the forefront, recording 352 baptisms, 94 marriages and 3,133 Easter duties. Farm Street again heads the list of recorded conversions, and the Cathedral of Easter duties. From the prosperous big parishes, glance at those recently started – perhaps you will even think of helping them – [Finchley] Church End, Potter’s Bar and Ponders End. Consider Copenhagen Street, a parish only four years old, registering 61 baptisms, 27 marriages, 13 conversions, 311 Easter duties. Or watch Claverton Street, Westminster [i.e.

Pimlico], opened only three years ago. In one year it can record 56 baptisms, 14 marriages, 13 conversions and 829 Easter duties. From other sources, indeed, we learn that the congregation at this church is steadily increasing and that more than 25,000 Communions were made in the past year.

But, the sharp reader will say, the Constitution for our Parish Council lays it down that the Union of Catholic Mothers should be represented on the membership. Well, err, yes.

But, you see, the UCM’s representative happens to be a Sister from the St Vincent’s Convent. See the problem?

[The 2019 Statistics, for comparison with the above, show the Cathedral with average Sunday Mass attendance of 3726, 65 baptisms, 9 receptions into the Church and 4 marriages; for Pimlico parish the figures are 600 at Sunday Mass, 29 baptisms, 3 receptions and 10 marriages.]

So we decided to drop that subject. However, we had the Liturgy to discuss. It is interesting to note how much time we devote to talking about the Liturgy of the Cathedral in a parish which has three other churches or chapels providing daily, public Mass; not to mention the other aspects of parish life. Presumably inevitable in the nature of things. But as time goes by I think we will all learn facts about the life of this parish we never dreamt of before ..

from the August 1920 Westminster Cathedral Chronicle

What a to-do we had when the Parish Council was first formed. Election manifestos; hustings in the Hall; elegant ballot papers – the General Election had nothing on it. And all to the good, of course. But now the Council is getting down to work: the honeymoon is over, so to speak. We are beginning to face the realities of life as Cathedral Parish Council.

By far and away the most successful venture of the Council has been the Sunday coffee sessions. However, there were those who felt that it was not fitting that priests announcing the fact at High Mass should refer to payment. So, in future, we are going to leave that as a nice surprise.

A nice surprise for the Council members was the Administrator’s provision of a couple of bottles of wine for their refreshment in the heat of debate. But there I will leave my report and your imagination. from the July 1970 Westminster Cathedral News Sheet .....

The 1919 Parish Statistics of the Diocese Besides the bare figures, the list is stimulating and suggestive.

It shows the number of parishes in the diocese, their individual activity, the creation of new ones, the progress of those recently formed, the state of others like Southall and Ware, otherwise well-known through their appealing 30

When Royals Gather. On 20 July 1920 a Requiem Mass was sung at Farnborough Abbey for the ex-Empress Eugénie.

Present at Mass for the first time in their reign were the King and Queen, as well as the King and Queen of Spain and the King of Portugal.

Oremus

July/August 2020

SVP CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL

Artwork and RE Miracle, Year 6 Religion is a very special and important subject at school, because it reminds us about the greatness of our Saviour Jesus Christ and our wonderful creator, God. At St Vincent de Paul we are very connected with religion (as we are a Catholic school) and as a Year 6 class we have been studying the bible and its different books, meaning that we take this lesson seriously and we are always willing to know more about God. Recently, our class has been looking at paintings of religious events and writing and describing them in our RE books. The first picture we have been looking at was a painting by El Greco which he did in 1575. It shows the Angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, informing her about the birth to Jesus our Saviour. It stands out by its colours and tells us how special Mary is to receive this Good News.

My favourite piece of scripture is Psalm 91: 1-3 and it says: ‘Whoever goes to the Lord for safety, Whoever remains under the protection of the Almighty, can say to him, “You are my God; in you I trust.”

He will keep me safe from all hidden dangers And from all deadly diseases.’

This reminds me to always remember that God is with me and guiding the path of goodness, pouring happiness into my family. It helps me realise that I should never be afraid at all because God is there with open arms and he knows when you need actual help. This kind of help is when you need support after losing a family member that you really love or maybe when evil leads you into the wrong path; you will also need this help if you are hurt or you are feeling quite poorly.

RE is one of my favourite subjects. My prayers on their own don’t take me to heaven, but my good deeds and my will to serve the Lord can. I also need to remember that when I do good deeds then it makes my life easier and God will help me.

The second picture (artist unknown) was a more modern design, showing how the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples who are represented as a range of different people chosen to spread the Good News. Before Jesus went to heaven, he promised that he would send the Holy Spirit upon them, allowing them to ‘speak in other tongues’ so that they could spread the Good News in different languages. This day is known as Pentecost Sunday. The picture shows vivid and different kinds of ways to picture this very special event.

The third image was painted by Jean Restout and has the same meaning as the second picture. It is very realistic and has outstanding colours in every single view. It shows Mary as the centrepiece, with everybody looking heavenwards as the light of the Holy Spirit appears and shines upon them.

July/August 2020

Oremus

31

GIVING MYSELF AWAY

From late May 2020, an opt-out system for organ donation was introduced in England. The Catholic Church has consistently encouraged its followers to consider organ donation. The act of donating organs before or after death has been considered a gift and an intrinsic good. However, a system of presumed consent risks taking away the right of the individual to exercise this decision, and therefore potentially undermines the concept of donation as a gift. Following the change in the law, all adults in England will be considered donors in the event of death, unless they have recorded a decision not to donate or are in one of the following excluded groups: those under the age of 18; people who lack the mental capacity to understand the new arrangements and take the necessary action; visitors to England, and those not living here voluntarily; and people who have lived in England for less than 12 months before their death.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has produced Guidelines for Catholics on Organ Donation, and how to record this decision online via the Organ Donation Register (ODR). The ODR also allows you to record your faith beliefs, so that they may be respected in the event of death and organ donation. Bishop Paul Mason, the lead bishop for Healthcare and Mental Health, said: ‘Preparing for death should not be feared. These guidelines hope to provide you with some information to help you make a wellinformed decision about donating your organs after death. It is important to discuss this with your family and loved ones, so that they are aware of your decision and can honour it. In turn, it is hoped that this may help to start a conversation so that you, too, are able to make an informed choice about loved ones when the time comes. It is good to see that the Human Tissue Authority has both

© Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be

Life After Death

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci

retained and strengthened the sections relating to faith (paragraphs 92-102) in the final Code of Practice. The Code has also provided further clarity on the potential case of a family objecting to the donation of the deceased's organs where consent has been deemed, as well as the role of the specialist nurses (SNs) in this scenario. We are grateful to the Human Tissue Authority for taking our consultation response into account and for providing these assurances’.

In a letter to faith groups, Professor John Forsythe, Medical Director, and Dr Dale Gardiner, National Clinical Lead for Organ Donation, of NHS Blood and Transplant, noted that: ‘The essential principle we want to reinforce is that a person's faith and beliefs will be respected in discussions with their families about donation, should the opportunity arise – whether or not they have recorded their decision in the register’.

After writing to NHS Blood and Transplant about organ donation in light of the coronavirus pandemic, Bishop Paul Mason received the following assurances: ’Our practices in supporting families are continuing

during this unprecedented time.

We are continuing to approach the family of every potential organ donor, to discuss whether their loved one would have wanted to donate their organs. We continue to offer families the opportunity to seek advice about organ donation from a faith leader, in this case a priest. Our specialist nurses would facilitate those discussions and depending on the situation in the hospital, this would be supported, either face to face or by phone. It will come down to local hospital policies whether or not such practices can continue due to COVID-19. We are conscious that it is a very difficult time for families. Hospitals are functioning as best as they can in very challenging circumstances. But rest assured, our specialist nurses remain committed to supporting donation conversations and the donation process, where it is possible to proceed, with the same care, dignity and compassion as always.’ NHS Blood and Transplant also noted that patients who have had COVID-19, or have been exposed to the virus, will not be considered as organ donors.

The Guidelines for Catholics can be found here: www.cbcew. org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ sites/3/2020/04/Organ-DonationGuidelines-Feb-2020.pdf More information on the law change can also be found on the NHS Organ Donation website: Information about the law change: www.organdonation.nhs.uk/optout/ Questions and answers around the law change: www.organdonation. nhs.uk/opt-out-faq/ Information and resources regarding the Christian perspective on organ donation www. organdonation.nhs.uk/helping-youto-decide/your-faith-and-beliefs/ christianity/

Oremus

July/August 2020