Thursday, April 30, 2015

'Traddie ladies' in the next Mass of Ages


The next edition of Mass of Ages is in the presses, and you can read online one of the articles: a conversation between a number of ladies attached to the Traditional Mass, online, here.

There are interesting discussions about mantillas, trouser-wearing, and stereotypes. (I've recently said a lot about head-coverings in church: see here.)

Regular readers of this blog may remember the bizarre attack on women who attend the Traditional Mass by Professor Tracey Rowland, to which I responded here and on Rorate Caeli. Rowland was talking about a sterotype which really exists only in her mind, but I think it worries a section of Catholic opinion that some women might sacrifice their social conformism, in a visible way, in terms of clothes, as part of their response to the Faith. This makes some people very uncomfortable.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Loftus: does 'e tell it like it is?

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The Sacrifice that reconciles God and Man
Mgr Basil Loftus' striptease of the Faith - discarding a discipline here, a doctrine there - is a remarkable spectacle. He has convinced himself that things are going his way so his spiritual nakedness is revealed more and more. Here are some gems from his Catholic Times column of 24th April 2015.

His grasp of Church politics must surely appal those he claims to support.

Religious Orders which abused the 'Tridentine' rite of Mass, in order to make political rather than liturgical points, found themselves [under Pope Francis] in special measures. Bishops who were deemed toi be imprudent and over-zealous in welcoming to their dioceses priests and religious opposed to Vatican II were sharply called to order, and their ringleader, Mario Oliveri, in the Italian diocese of Albenga-Imperia, was stripped of all his episcopal powers.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Mass for the Persecuted: Juventutem London

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On Friday I attended the first of our planned series of Masses for persecuted Christians; it fell on the anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide.

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It was celebrated by Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP, with the assistance of Fr Patrick Hawyard and Fr Scott Anderson of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, for the London Juventutem group: it was one of their monthly masses, on the last Friday of the month in St Mary Moorfields, Eldon Street, in the City.

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These are my own photos; the full set is here.
A member of the Juventutem group was taking photos which can be seen here, and their blog here.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

The Traditional Mass and Africa

Today I am publishing a Position Paper for the FIUV on the Traditional Mass in Africa - subsaharan Africa. Go over to Rorate Caeli to read it. Here I am going to add a little extra commentary.

I am sure there will not be lacking people who will tell us earnestly that the Traditional Mass is not appropriate for conditions in Africa, because the Traditional Mass represents a form of religious culture - European religious culture - which is alien and incomprehensible to Africans, by contrast with the Novus Ordo.

It is true that the Traditional Mass was formed in Europe, but the progressives don't seem to have noticed that the same is true of the Novus Ordo. The difference is that the Traditional Mass formed in Europe a long time ago. How does this difference cash out?

Well, the late Antique and early Medieval Europe which produced the EF had a great respect for the supernatural; it had a great sensitivity to the reality of the sacred, of sin, and of evil - including of witchcraft; it was comfortable with ritual; and it was concerned with tradition, the ways of one's ancestors.

The Novus Ordo is a product of a culture which is uncomfortable with the supernatural, and with ritual; a culture which regards liberation from tradition, from the ways of one's ancestors, as the key to authenticity and freedom (whateve that means); which cannot bear to think about the reality of sin; and which regards evil, and witchcraft, as a joke.

So, obviously, the Novus Ordo is bound to be more suited to the cultural conditions of Africa... right?

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Juventutem London: Mass for Persecuted Christians

Friday 24th April, 7:30pm
St Mary Moorfields Church, London EC2M 7LS (click for a map)

Reposted. This also coincides with the 50th Anniversary of the Latin Mass Society's first public meeting. The following is an extract from an unpublished history of the Society's early years.

[T]he Society’s first Press Officer, Kathleen Hindmarsh, clarified its aims: 

The society will exist to ensure the preservation of the Latin Low, and Sung Mass forms, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, relating to the Latin rite. It is associated in its basic aim—that of preserving the Latin liturgy—with the Una Voce Society of Europe, and the Catholic Traditionalist movement of America, although the peripheral aims of the three societies are not necessarily identical.

The meeting was attended by over 400. Sir Arnold Lunn, who had agreed to act as the Society’s first President, said: ‘We want the Latin Mass, which we regard as the norm. We see the vernacular as an extra…, a melancholy and regrettable concession to human frailty.’ The Tablet reported:

Many of the comments and questions showed an understandable but distressing bitterness and bewilderment: the less rational voiced a fear of schism and even a suspicion that some fifth column was conspiring to destroy the Church from within. As any anthropologist could have predicted, the sudden compulsory abandonment of a sacred collective art-form, an ancient and accepted matrix of devotion, is bound to leave high, dry and desolate both those brought up to it and those who have discovered in it a living and continuing symbol of supernatural, supernational, changeless and eternal faith. An excellent young chairman ruled the storm, advocating charity and gently reiterating that the society was not another Pilgrimage of Grace. 
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High Mass with Polyphony for Persecuted Christians,
on the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.


Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Monday, April 20, 2015

LMS Priest Training in Prior Park: photos

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I attended part of the Latin Mass Society's Priest and Server Training Conference which took place last week at Prior Park, the Catholic public school on the outskirts of Bath.

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Bishop Bains' magnificent neo-classical Chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows, with its side chapels, made a superb backdrop for the liturgies and training of the week. For the slightly complicated history of the complex see here. Here are some photos.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Michael Voris is coming to London

I've been asked to pass this on. While I certainly don't agree with everything he says, Michael Voris is an important voice for traditionally-minded Catholics, and this event is FREE.

It is at the Regent Hall, Oxford Street, in London, at 7pm on Friday 1st May.

Get your free e-ticket here.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

FIUV 'fundamentalist'?

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Spot the suspect ecclesiology: Archbishop McMahon,
then bishop of Nottingham, preaching at an LMS
training conference
27th March, from Mgr Basil Loftus in the Catholic Times:

It is not the liturgy in itself which worries Francis, but the theological errors which underpin the purported 'reform of the reform'. This was made clear well before Francis' time when representatives of one fundamentalist organisation--Una Voce--were received by the Assistant Secretary of State, Archbishop Benelli, in October 1976. He told them that "those who wish to retain the old Mass have a different ecclesiology". 

In this column Loftus demonstrates his inability to distinguish the question of the 'reform of the reform' from the question of the continued use of the old, unreformed books: despite basing the article around remarks of Pope Francis which make the distinction very clearly.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Easter Sunday in Oxford

This Easter there was celebrated a High Mass in the Traditional form, in Oxford, for the first time since the 1960s.

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Sunday, April 12, 2015

A spiritual Resurrection?

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The Consecration at the Easter Vigil, St Mary Moorfields, London
Mgr Loftus hasn't delighted his readers with his thoughts on the nature of the Resurrection since 2012 (8 July: ‘Christ was not physically present either during his appearances on earth after the Resurrection, or in the Eucharist.’), but this Easter he is back on his old form.

The Catholic Times, 3 April 2015:
The undoubted reality of the Presence of Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity is not a physical presence, but a spiritual presence.
            The equally undoubted resurrection of our bodies will not be a copy of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Our bodies will not be re-animated, or come back to life with their physical properties. Physical bodies require a place to be displayed, but Heaven is not a place. … We ourselves will be raised from the dead, it is our bodies that will rise, this is the continuity. But rather than speaking of a ‘spiritual body’ we need to think of the spiritual reality of our body, because we will then be animated not by our soul but by the spirit of the Risen Christ.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Schellhorn Prize and performance

Press Release from the LMS

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Schellhorn Prize winning entry receives its World Premiere

The winning entry of the 2015 inaugural Schellhorn Prize for Sacred Music Composition received its World Premiere during the recent Triduum services in the City of London. 

Ecce Quam Bonum, a setting of Psalm 133 by young composer Marco Galvani, was performed as part of the Easter Vigil Mass at St Mary Moorfields.

Wednesday, April 08, 2015

High Mass at Holy Trinity, Hethe

The next Sung Mass at Holy Trinity, Hethe, is Low Sunday, Sunday 12th April.

Here are some photos of the last one, the first High Mass we have had there with the new Parish Priest, Fr Paul Lester, and quite probably since the 1960s.

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For the Third Sunday of Lent we had our first High Mass at Holy Trinity - the first, at any rate, with Fr Paul Lester. Though it is a small church there is plenty of room for the ceremonies in the sanctuary. In the old days churches were built with this in mind, even if it was not a frequent occurrence.

Tuesday, April 07, 2015

Easter Vigil in St Mary Moorfields in London

For the first time I attended the Easter Vigil organised by the Latin Mass Society in London; I also went to one of the Tenebrae services which made up the full set of services offered in St Mary Moorfields in the City.

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The Easter fire is lit in a little alley which gives access to a back door into the church's sacristy.

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Monday, April 06, 2015

Good Friday with the FSSP in Reading

Some photos of the Solemn Afternoon liturgy in St William of York, celebrated by the Fraternity of St Peter. The celebrant was Fr Matthew Goddard FSSP.

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Friday, April 03, 2015