Chris Inman RIP

Chris Inman has been involved with the Latin Mass Society for a very long time; having held various posts he was one of our honorary Vice Presidents at the time of his death.

He died on Friday. I'm in a field in France so I can't do anything about a proper appreciation, right now, but I will have plenty of opportunity to pray for him. A Catholic and a gentleman.

Please pray for him too.

Requiescat in pace.

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Mass of Pentecost

My phone is telling me I've used up my data allowance. But here, with luck, is a photo of the outside Mass at midday today.



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We have arrived at Choisel camp

8pm French time, after the final, killing, climb, we got into the camp: the conclusion of the first day's walking, which started after Mass at 9am.

The washing facilities are, I think, unique. But hey, no one's asking me to climb any more hills, so I'm happy. I'll go and get my bowl of soup and bread roll to celebrate!

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Pilgrimage to Chartres: setting off

Te great Pilgrimage to Chartres is setting off, from Notre Dame in Paris, where we have had Mass. We usually only have a blessing in the cathedral, and Mass at lunch time; this marks the 30th pilgrimage.


I am with the British chapters (we have two); I've seen the Australians, and Dr John Rao from the American chapter, who will be giving a talk at the LMS Conference on 9th June; he is a great supporter of the Chartres Pilgrimage.

I have also seen some of the Sons of the Holy Redermer; I spotted Fr Anthony Mary processing in the with the priests into Mass; the phots above is of one of a couple of postulants with banners.

Mass was a Missa Cantata, with a sermon, and blessing of the Pilgrims at the end, by an auxiliary bishop of Paris.

Although I was in the North aisle, with a restricted view, Mass in Notre Dame was very impressive, with scores of priests and chapters with their banners processing in and out.

Now comes the difficult part: walking 75 miles in two and a half days...


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Fr Martin Edwards

that once at sea, we are no longer bound by the obligation of Friday abstinence.


Breakfast on the ferry.

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Chartres: setting off from London

We have had Mass in the Crypt at Westminster Cathedral, and are in the coach heading for Dover.

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Off to Chartres!

Apologies for slow posting, I am in the final throws of preparations for the Chartres Pilgrimage.

Even though I think the Hans Kung story is hilarious. Who'd have thought the pompous old liberal would turn into a legalistic sede vacantist in his twilight years?

I'll be doing some live blogging and twittering from the road to Chartres, so keep an eye on the blog and subscribe to my Twitter feed if you are on Twitter. Last time I went, two years ago, I did a lot of Facebook stuff, uploading pictures. I'm not gong to do that again because I've gone off FB, it is now rubbish with the IPhone, and it is of limited value with my limited circle of 'friends'. And every time they change the format I hate it a bit more. So this is a test for my live blogging technology.

Among other things I'm sure all the pilgrims will be keeping the SSPX-Rome negotiations in their prayers. The SSPX has its own pilgrimage which goes the other way, from Chartres to Paris, we pass each other (at least distantly) halfway. These two pilgrimages, taken together, are I think the biggest devotional annual event in Christendom, so this outpouring of prayer and penance must count for something.

Festa Paschalia

Philip Goddard at the London Colney Priest Training Conference

A new book, available on the LMS website, on the complex history of the Holy Week rites, by Philip Goddard, a long-term friend of the LMS.


BUY IT HERE!

Here is some blurb.

Festa Paschalia (Philip J Goddard)

This book provides the first comprehensive history in English for eighty years of the origins and development of the Holy Week liturgy in the Roman Rite. Describing how the first apostles and disciples, and their immediate successors, came during the years following AD33 to celebrate an annual feast of the Resurrection, and the form which this first-century celebration took, it goes on to explain in detail how the ceremonies with which we are familiar today began in fourth-century Jerusalem. These ceremonies were then elaborated and developed during the early and late Middle Ages in Western Europe, particularly in the Frankish Kingdom, and at Rome itself, down to the tridentine reform of the sixteenth century, a reform which endured for some four hundred years with very little change.

Looking at the two significant twentieth-century reforms of the rites, that of 1955 and that of 1970, Philip J Goddard then explains the various changes which were made, the sources from which innovations were introduced, and the reasons for the introduction of those changes and innovations, as given (so far as possible) by those involved in making them.

While accessible to the ordinary reader with no particular knowledge of liturgical history, this study will be of great interest to liturgical specialists and scholars, to those in seminaries and religious orders or to clergy interested in the history of the Roman liturgy. Comprehensive notes give full references to both primary and secondary sources.

May Procession at St William of York

Last Sunday, after our usual Sung Mass, we had a procession in honour of Our Lady, and her statue was crowned by a little girl from the community.

Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP blessed the crown with holy water before, and incensed the statue after, the crowning.

The dress of the young lady deputed to crown Our Lady was magnificent, and she had seven train-bearers.
More photos here.

The Tablet on Liturgical Pluralism

Robert Mickens

This weekend The Tablet has published a letter of mine responding to the bizarre report by their Rome correspondant, Robert Mickens, of the publication of an Ordo for the Office by the Pontifical Commission Excclesia Dei.

Mickens was surprised to see that no post-1962 saints had been added to the calendar. For someone who takes such an interest in these matters, did he really not know that the addition of new saints has yet to take place? Or is his shock, on looking at the Ordo entirely synthetic? He wrote:


Among the first things one notices flipping through its 91 pages is that saints canonised after the Second Vatican Council are missing. No Edith Stein. No Maximilian Kolbe. No Padre Pio. Not even Josemaría Escrivá. This is odd, given that Pope Benedict specifically said in Summorum Pontificum (2007) that “new saints … should be inserted in the old Missal”. The Ordo, of course, is not the Missal, but the calendar for the breviary and the Mass is identical. 


No matter. As this new publication demonstrates, the old rite continues to be widely different from the new rite. Many of the same saints are celebrated on different days in the two forms, and the general ordering of the liturgical seasons is different. For example, there was not before – nor is there now – “Ordinary Time” in the old rite. Can the coexistence of these two “forms” really promote unity when we’re not even praying from the same page?


Clearly the Holy Father thinks so; one indication is the promulgation of the Ordinariate calendar, which has 'Sundays after Epiphany' and 'Sundays after Trinity' in the Anglican (and Sarum) fashion, instead of 'Ordinary Time'. Here's my letter, with the original capitalisations; for some reason the tablet allows Mickens to capitalise 'ordinary time', but not me. Perhaps the Letters Editor is an e.e. cummings fan.

Robert Mickens (Letter from Rome, 12th May), referring to the new Ordo produced for the Extraordinary Form by the PCED, with its distinctive liturgical calendar, asks ‘Can the coexistence of these two “forms” really promote unity when we’re not even praying from the same page?’ This is a puzzling question, since if all the differences between the two Forms of the Roman Rite were ironed out, there would be no two forms to promote unity.


The promotion of unity by means of liturgical diversity is a theme of the Second Vatican Council, both in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (‘Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity’: Sacrosanctum Concilium 37) and the Decree on Ecumenism (‘But let all… enjoy a proper freedom, … in their different liturgical rites... they will be giving ever better expression to the authentic catholicity and apostolicity of the Church’: Unitatis redintegratio 4) Bl. Pope John Paul II declared that a ‘genuine plurality of forms’ is ‘the Church’s ideal’ (Orientale Lumen 2). With the Eastern churches in view, this pluriformity clearly includes important differences in the calendar.


Even within the Latin Church, Mr Mickens will find calendrical differences. In churches belonging to religious orders, he will perhaps be shocked to witness celebrations of the order’s founder and martyrs which are not celebrated in the next parish. He is no doubt even more shocked to find that the Bishops of England and Wales this week celebrate the Feast of the Ascension on a different day to the Holy Father in Rome. If he looks at the newly-approved calendar for the Ordinariate, he may need to lie down: like the calendar for the Extraordinary Form, it eschews the term ‘Ordinary Time’.


Yours faithfully,


Joseph Shaw Chairman, The Latin Mass Society


The oddest thing about this whole debate is that liberal Catholics are in favour of liturgical variety. The Tablet has (at least by implication) defended priests who make up their own prayers, for example; they are dismissive of attempts to rein in what the Holy Father has called 'arbitrary deformations of the liturgy'. They seem to be in favour of variety when it is illicit, and against variety when it is licit. The licit is illicit, the licit illicit... As Milton's Satan said, 'Evil be though my good!' Or maybe just 'Non serviam!' I will not serve.