Blessing of Wine for the feast of St John

At SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford, following the EF Low Mass.

The Logic of the Incarnation

My 'Christmas article' for LifeSiteNews.

In Advent, we expect Christ’s coming in several senses. There is an eschatological sense: we expect Christ to come as Judge at the end of time, an expectation key to the Christian life. There is a sacramental sense: we expect the coming of Christ in the Eucharist, where He will be as real as He was in Bethlehem. There is the spiritual sense: we hope and prepare for Christ to come into our hearts. And then there is the most obvious one, which forms the backdrop to the others. The Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, is to be revealed as a baby.

Christ has been present on Earth since the Annunciation, hidden in the womb of His Mother. That day, 25 March, was for centuries the start of the English financial year; it is also the date JRR Tolkien chose for the final destruction of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is, in truth, the date of the Incarnation. In His birth, however, Christ is revealed to us: He becomes, as a man, a public person. It is now possible and appropriate for Him to be venerated by the shepherds and the Wise Men. In His birth He becomes subject to the Law of Moses, at least apparently, though really He is the Lord of it: it pleases Him and His Mother to fulfil the Law scrupulously. In His birth He also becomes vulnerable, and He must be carried into safety from the wrath of Herod. We might say that in His birth, the logic of the Incarnation is worked out more fully.

Carry on reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Iota Unum talks confirmed for 2020

Fr Edward van den Bergh giving the last Iota Unum talk of 2019

In 2019 the Latin Mass Society undertook a number of new initiatives in London: notably, a new chant schola, the Schola Cantorum Sancti Ioanni Houghton, to train new singers; a series of Server Training days under the Society of St Tarcisius; and a monthly series of talks, the 'Iota Unum' talks.

These three initiatives have each been a great success. I have already announced the early 2020 dates for server training, and I am delighted to announce another 6 months' of Iota Unum talks have also been confirmed, with some great speakers and topics.

They take place in the basement of Our Lady of the Assumption, Warwick Street (please enter through the basement stairs from Golden Square), on Friday evenings.

Doors open at 6:30pm for talk at 7pm.

All welcome. £5 on the door; light refreshments.

Join the mailing list for London events here.

Rose Vestments in Holy Trinity, Hethe

Fr Richard Conrad celebrated Mass in the Dominican Rite for the Latin Mass Society's quarterly Mass in Holy Trinity, Hethe, the oldest Catholic parish church in Oxfordshire.

Help the Sons of the Holy Redeemer replace their boat

 A recent visitor to the Sons of the Holy Redeemer on Papa Stronsay Island in the Orkeneys, a former LMS Local Representative, writes as follows:

I left Papa Stronsay yesterday evening [9th Dec]. Fixed up the boat and myself and Fr Magdala launched it in a weather window on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. But- that evening a gale – a ten year freak - with 50-60 mph gusts and swell - blew up when it was on the other side at Stronsay pier. The front rope gave way on tying up. The monks were thank God all off. The boat spun round and was tossed ten to fifteen feet in the air like a toy and came down on the stone pier- smashing the deck off and the front. It ended up on the beach at Stronsay as matchsticks.

I helped pick up the bits off the beach last night. Tragic but not a disaster as they just get on with things. Boat had been overhauled for last three months rebuilding the engine, electrics, fuel and repainting. The other small boat is old, leaky and unreliable - so not useable as a main boat.

Had to get a local in a fishing boat to get us off the Island and the monks are relying on the good people of Stronsay for emergency supplies this Christmas.

Magazine of Una Voce International: new edition

Among my regular tasks is the editing of the magazine of Una Voce International, the FIUV (Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce). This is a mainly-electronic periodical, and a new edition is now available, number 8 in the series.

It can be downloaded here.

Anyone can join the mailing list for receipt of Gregorius Magnus:

sign up here 

to receive mailings like this one.

With best wishes for Advent and Christmas!

Support the Latin Mass Society

Burse-making in Hampton Court with the Guild of St Clare

Burse-making at the RSN with Heather Lewis


The Guild of St Clare is collaborating with the Royal School of Needlework to provide a special one day course in burse-making. This is a unique opportunity to learn the skills necessary to make one of the more tricky pieces of the traditional vestment set. The tuition will be provided by RSN tutor Heather Lewis, who led our previous Guild of St Clare course in ecclesiastical goldwork, back in 2012. The course will take place at Hampton Court Palace in the RSN's teaching apartments, and is subsidised by the Guild of St Clare.


The date is the 8th February 2020, and the course will run between 10am and 4pm. Tea and coffee are provided; you will need to bring a packed lunch, or you can visit one of Hampton Court Palace's cafes. The cost, including the materials and the special Guild of St Clare discount, is £105.


For more information please email Lucy on lucyashaw@gmail.com, or book through the registration link on the LMS website.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Colin Mawby 1936-2019, Requiescat in pace

Colin Mawby, Catholic composer and a Patron of the Latin Mass Society, has died aged 83.



He was a great supporter of Gregorian Chant, and took an enthusiastic part in several chant training events the Latin Mass Society organised. The above two photographs are from 2016, below I found one from 2012. His enthusiasm was infectious and his knowledge and practical experience enormous. As Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral over the time of the liturgical reform, he was responsible at that crucial moment for the Cathedral's musical tradition not being jettisoned like so much else.

LMS Pilgrimage in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 2019

Today we had our second pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Catholic Church of the Holy Child and St Joseph in Bedford.



They have there a very special reproduction of the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which goes on tour around the country. The church has recently been officially designated as a shrine.

Requiem at St Benet's Hall: photos

Fr John van den Burgh of the London Oratory, an alumnus of St Benet's, celebrated a Sung Requiem Mass for the deceased of the Hall on Saturday 9th November. He was assisted by Fr Daniel Lloyd. Mass was accompanied by the Schola Abelis of Oxford.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Photos from the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage, 25-27 Oct

Above: Bishop Dominique Rey of Frejus Toulon celebrating Mass in Sta Trinita on Sunday 27.



Mass in the Pantheon on Friday 25

A response to Zita Ballinger Fletcher: the Mass is not 'a cult of toxic tradition'

Procession to St Peter's during the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage

My latest on LifeSiteNews.

A certain Zita Ballinger Fletcher, writing in the National ‘Catholic’ Reporter (a notoriously not-very-Catholic publication) has written an unintentionally hilarious article attacking the traditional Mass. It alternates between statements of the obvious, presented as though they were horrifying revelations — the Latin Mass is said in Latin! The priest celebrates facing away from the people! — with bizarre non sequiturs: this form of the Mass is sexist, oppressive, and clericalist.

And worst of all, people aren’t allowed to wear red.

Fletcher is worried about division in the Church — at least, this is presumably the point of talking about the Latin Mass creating ‘sects’ — but it is she, not Catholics attached to the ancient liturgical tradition, who is causing divisions with this article. Her embittered and rather personal attack contrasts very much with the attitude of her victims. Traditional Catholics do not fill their leisure hours attacking the character of Catholics who attend the ‘Ordinary Form’. 

Continue reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

The problem with 'Great Books'

My latest in the Catholic Herald: a book review.

In the 1920s, some influential academics were dismayed to find that many graduates of elite American universities were, not to put too fine a point on it, culturally illiterate. They lacked the knowledge that could be taken for granted among cultivated Europeans at the beginnings of their tertiary education, let alone at the end.

The academics’ natural response was to attempt to address this lack, and so the “Western Civilisation Course” or “Great Books Programme” was born, and made compulsory (or strongly recommended) in many institutions. These courses frog-marched students through a carefully selected canon of Western literature, from the Greeks and Romans onwards, with excursions into philosophy and history.

Continue reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Requiems this Saturday: London and Oxford

Sung Domincan Rite Mass in St Dominic's from the spring, celebrated by Fr Lawrence Lew

The Catholic Medical Association is holding a Requiem for deceased members followed by a day of recollection in St Dominic's, Havestock Hill, this Saturday: the Dominican Rite Sung Mass begins at 11am. See here for more details.

The annual Requiem for deceased members, staff, and benefactors at St Benet's Hall, 38 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LN will take place on Saturday at 10:30am. It will be a High Mass in the traditional Roman Rite, and will be celebrated by Fr Edward van den Burgh of the London Oratory.

Last year's Requiem at St Benet's Hall

Support the Latin Mass Society

Prof Stephen Bullivant at Iota Unum talk Friday (1st Nov) in London

Our series of Iota Unum talks in London continues with Prof Stepen Bullivant, author of Mass Exodus, talking about his study of Catholic lapsation since the second world war.

Did Vatican II have anything to do with it? Stephen Bullivant, a sociologist of religion, will tell you...

6:30 for 7pm in the basement of Our Lady of the Assumption, Warwick Street: please use the Golden Square entrance. £5 on the door. Drinks and a good company.

Click for a map.

See my discussion of the book on LifeSiteNews.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Perseverantes Unanimiter in Oratione: Pilgrimage to Walsingham, 7-8 December

The LMS Walking Pilgrimage to Walsingham in August 2019

From the LMS

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children is being joined by the Latin Mass Society and the Good Counsel Network in organising a pilgrimage to Walsingham on 7-8 December, with a short conference on the Saturday and a Sung EF Mass on Sunday (10am in the Reconciliation Chapel at the Catholic Shrine, Houghton St Giles), followed by a procession to the site of the Holy House in the grounds of Walsingham Priory.

The pilgrimage is in response to recent legislation imposing compulsory sex education on schools, including Catholic schools, and seeks God's grace for those, above all our bishops, in responding to
this.

The conference will be addressed by Joseph Shaw, Chairman of the Latin Mass Society.

Full details here.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Last Saturday was the LMS Pilgrimage to Oxford. We had a lovely Dominican Rite High Mass in Blackfriars, with the Schola Abelis singing Dominican chant, and the Newman Consort singing Byrd's Four Part Mass, with a motet by Baudldeweyn, Ave caro Christi cara: all of which was lovely.

Pachamama is a pagan deity

My latest on LifeSiteNews.

Quite a lot of what is happening at the Synod on the Amazon right now in Rome is shrouded in mystery, since the press is not being allowed to see the texts of synod addresses — even those of Pope Francis. We are left to contemplate the outward spectacle, which started with a strange tree-planting ceremony in the Vatican gardens and continues with processions and displays in St Peter’s and elsewhere. At the ceremony, and in many of these displays, is a figurine of Pachamama, which in the tree-planting seemed to be what various participants were bowing before, while Pope Francis stood in the background.

Heroic efforts have been made to explain Pachamama away. Austen Ivereigh, the papal biographer, declared not only that she was a native representation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but that anyone expressing concern about the figurine was racist. It took the Vatican press officers to disabuse him. In a press conference, Bishop David Martínez de Aguirre Guinea of Peru suggested instead:

Probably those who used this symbol demonstrated, wishes to reflect fertility, to women, to life, the life presence among these Amazonian people … and Amazonia is meant to be full of life. I don’t think we need to create any connections with the Virgin Mary or with a pagan element.

On this line of thought, the figurine represents an abstraction, or perhaps a collection of them: ‘fertility’, ‘women’, ‘life’.

Continue reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Scalfari and the Pope on the Divinity of Christ

My latest on LifeSiteNews.

Earlier this month, journalist Eugenio Scalfari claimed that Pope Francis believes, "once incarnated, Jesus ceases to be a God and becomes a man until his death on the cross."

Scalfari’s claims about the beliefs of Pope Francis have been puzzling Catholics for six years, and from time to time elicit some form of denial from Vatican spokesmen. On this occasion, they pointed out that Scalfari’s apparently direct quotations of the Holy Father are a mere "personal and free interpretation" of his words, and, furthermore, Scalfari has not met Pope Francis for two years.

Neither statement is exactly decisive, especially as Scalfari claims to have telephone conversations with Pope Francis, a claim that has never been denied. Nevertheless, I was inclined to sympathize with the spokesman, Matteo Bruni, who expressed some exasperation. This claim is so ridiculous, he suggested, that it just goes to show how little we should trust Scalfari’s claims.

Continue reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Oxford Pilgrimage this Saturday: Mass at 11am in Blackfriars

This Saturday, 19th, is the annual Latin Mass Society Oxford Pilgrimage, with a High Mass in the Dominican Rite at 11am, and a procession at 2:15 followed by Benediction.

It is the feast of St Frideswide, the Patron of the City of Oxford, and the Mass will be hers.

Blackfriars is in St Giles in the centre of Oxford, postcode OX1 3LY: click for a map.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Our Lady of the Rosary in Holy Trinity, Hethe

If these photographs look as though they were taken through a gradually thickening fog, they were. There was a lot of incense left over from the previous Mass when we started, and the view from the choir loft became steadily more obscure as Mass proceeded. Nevertheless, it was a lovely occasion, the first time - probably, the first time ever - that the traditional Dominican Rite has been celebrated in this venerable church.



Fr Richard Conrad OP followed the Mass with a blessing of roses, which is a Dominican tradition on this day. Roses, and lilies, are very much a theme of the chants.

LMS Aylesford Pilgrimage, 26th October

The St Catherine's Trust Summer School at Aylesford in July

Saturday 26th October will see the Latin Mass Society's annul pilgrimage to the Carmelite Priory at Aylesford, home of the Brown Scapular. We have Mass in the Relic Chapel, which houses the cranium of St Simon Stock, the recipient of the promises of Our Lady on the scapular.

Schedule of the 2019 Pilgrimage

12:45 pm – Confessions (Fr Neil Brett)

1:30 pm – Missa Cantata (Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary) (Fr Matthew Goddard FSSP)
Sung by Schola Cantorum Sancti Johannes Houghton (Director: Clifford Lister)

3:00 pm – The Rosary Way (led by Fr Matthew Goddard FSSP)

3:45 pm – Enrolment in the Brown Scapular (administer by Fr Matthew Goddard FSSP)

4:15 pm – Vespers (Little Office of Our Lady) and Benediction (Fr Matthew Goddard FSSP)

Enrollment in the Brown Scapular in the Relic Chapel

Support the Latin Mass Society

Good Counsel Network: annual ball

From the Good Counsel Network.

I am really pleased to invite you to Good Counsel’s Annual Pro – Life Fundraising Ball on the 9th November, and being held at the Royal Garden Hotel in South Kensington. This is our biggest event of the year and helps raise thousands of pounds for our life-saving work.

We would really love as many of our supporters as possible to come and have a great night out. We can promise a great night with a superb 3 course, 5 star meal, a brilliant live band, with even more time for dancing than last year and lots of fun throughout the night with games, a silent auction and an opportunity to continue supporting the vital pro-life work of the Good Counsel Network.

The following are the key details:

DATE: Saturday 9th November 2019

TIME: Arrival from 6pm with dinner starting at 7pm, please don't be late as we will not be able to wait for you!

LOCATION: The Royal Garden Hotel, 2-24 Kensington High Street, London, W8 4PT. Please look for the Palace Suite (The Palace suite has its own exclusive entrance to the right of the main doors.)

TICKET PRICE: £95 per person. Tables of 10 cost £900.

TO BOOK TICKETS YOU MUST EMAIL GCNBALL@GMAIL.COM OR CALL 07886000882.

DIETARY REQUIREMENTS: All dietary requirements can be catered for, but these requirements must be given to us at the time of booking.

DRESS CODE: Black Tie

We look forward to hearing from you and hopefully seeing you soon.

God bless

Conor

Support the Latin Mass Society

Sir James MacMillan: London performances

Sir James MacMillan is a Patron of the Latin Mass Society, and I am pleased to pass on this notice about a forthcoming performance of his work, from the man himself.

-----

Le grand Inconnu is coming to London on 14 October. (The BBC Radio 3 broadcast of the premiere is below.) 

Performed by The Sixteen, Genesis Sixteen and the Britten Sinfonia at the Barbican that evening it is paired with my The Sun Danced, based on the miracles at Fatima. 

Also two of my favourite composers in the programme - Arvo Part and Benjamin Britten. 

Come and join us! 

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2019/event/the-sixteen-le-grand-inconnu

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008j31

Support the Latin Mass Society

'Breaking with the Pope'

My latest on Life Site.

The canon lawyer and journalist Edward Condon declared to his Twitter followers the other day, ‘If someone tells you the only way to be authentically Catholic is to break with the pope and the bishops, they are — at best — a Protestant’.

I and many others asked him to explain what he means by ‘break with’ the bishops or the pope, but to no avail. Mr Condon prefers to keep it vague, but he presumably means something which applies or might apply to real people, people who continue to think of themselves as ‘authentic Catholics’.

Perhaps I can help him out. Like Condon, I believe that Jorge Bergoglio was validly elected as pope and reigns today, as a matter of the law of the Church, as Pope Francis. Also like Condon, who has written extensively and often very well on recent crises in the Church, I have some concerns about some of the things which Pope Francis has done and said. Perhaps he and I also agree that it would be good if Pope Francis were to clarify some of his more puzzling remarks, even if Condon prefers not to clarify his own. 

Continue reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Cardinal Burke in London: photos

His Eminence Raymond, Cardinal Burke, celebrated Low Mass in the Shrine Church of Corpus Christi on Monday 16th September, at the request of the Latin Mass Society. We were very honoured by his kindness in doing this, which is very characteristic of him.



This church is one of London's historic Catholic churches, and has a special place in the history of the Traditional Mass, as thanks to various parish priests over the years the celebration of the ancient Mass never ceased here. Today it is, of longstanding custom, celebrated every Monday evening, a Mass organised by the Latin Mass Society, and on some other occasions as well. Cardinal Burke was a very special celebrant, therefore, for this regular Mass, which is usualy a Missa Cantata.

Reminder: Server training in London this Saturday

Enrollmemts into the Society of St Tarcisius on the Walsingham Pilgrimage

The training days for Altar servers have been a great success, regularly attracting a dozen participants. The servers' sodality we have established, the Society of St Tarcisius, now has 59 enrolled members, from as far away as Bristol and Edinburgh.

In the London events, the Guild of St Clare has a vestment-mending day running alongside the server training, making use (at St Mary Moorfield's) of the large and well-appointed basement.

The next two events, on this Saturday, one next month, are both in St Mary Moorfields, 4-5 Eldon St, London EC2M 7LS (click for a map):

Saturday 14th September (booking page here)

Saturday 30th November (booking page here).

Please book for the server training; if you wish to participate in the vestment mending, email the Guild of St Clare. (It really helps to know how many people are coming!)

Support the Latin Mass Society

Gender theory is ruining theatre

My latest on LifeSiteNews.

By the time I finally stopped watching television, more than a decade ago, even the shows I liked best were being spoiled by the producers’ need to include politically correct themes, issues, and characters. There can be no objection to having, for example, bad people, in fiction, who are nominally Christian, or good people who are same sex–attracted, but if they invariably turn out that way, one begins to wonder if something strange is going on. At the same time, writers were having to make their plots more and more macabre to maintain a constant level of shock value. Between the obeisance to political correctness and the display of dismembered corpses, the human interest of the drama seemed to have slipped away.

The decay of modern culture manifests itself in a different way in theatre. I watch a fair number of plays, including open-air Shakespeare and student productions in and around Oxford. The summer season has just come to a close, and while some of the productions have been excellent, others have been problematic. When presenting classical drama, a view has taken hold, less so at the top level of professional theatre, but elsewhere, that the sex of a character does not affect the relationships between that character and others.

Continue reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Eucharistic Adoration is not the answer to the crisis of faith in the Real Presence

My latest on LifeSiteNews.

Recently, it was reported that more than half of self-described Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence at all. As I have written before, this represents an emergency, a pastoral crisis, which has received a somewhat lethargic response. Not long before the survey about beliefs came out, Stephen Bullivant’s survey on lapsation recorded lapsed Catholics complaining that their parish catechists didn’t believe the Faith and were not passing it on. It seems that some of our lapsed brothers and sisters would like to insist on higher standards of orthodoxy than some of our priests and bishops.

Apart from catechesis and preaching, one traditional response to error about one doctrine or another is to emphasize the correct teaching liturgically. Bowing or kneeling at references to the Incarnation (in the Creed, when we say “and was made man”), for example, helps to hammer home the truth about that. I am a strong believer in the power of the liturgy to reinforce the Faith: for one thing, it is impossible to get adult Catholics to go to catechism classes, but if they come to church at all, they will experience the liturgy. Can Eucharistic Adoration help, then, in restoring the sense among Catholics that Christ is truly present in the Host?

Continue reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Paganism old and new

My latest on LifeSiteNews.

A recent study by the London-based Benedict Centre has shown that up to half of self-described atheists and agnostics across different countries believe in ‘underlying forces of good and evil’ and that ‘significant events are “meant to be”’. This is a reminder that a large part of the decline of religious practice and belief in the West is not about rejecting the supernatural realm, but adopting a kind of vague paganism. This should not be confused, however, with the paganism of the ancient world.

Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, the people of ancient Greece and Rome had an uneasy conscience about many of the practices Christianity later suppressed, which are re-emerging today. The Greek historian of Rome, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, praised Rome’s mythical founder, Romulus, for making marriage a holy and indissoluble institution (Roman Antiquities II.25), from which it later declined. It’s far from clear what historical basis there might be to this claim, but it represents an ideal, a golden age, from which the Romans and Greeks of Dionysius’s own day fell short.

Carry on reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Cardinal Pell and contempt for justice

My latest on LifeSiteNews.

---

As I have written before, the conviction of Cardinal Georgy Pell, despite being upheld on appeal, is difficult to understand. On the one hand, as Pell’s legal team painstakingly explained, it was essentially impossible for Pell to have abused two choristers (as alleged) in a sacristy, while still vested, without anyone noticing, at a time when he would actually have been outside the front of the cathedral talking to Mass-goers. On the other hand, the only evidence against him is the word of one accuser; the other alleged victim denied that the abuse took place.

However the jury and two court of appeal came to their decisions, doubts will continue to be voiced, especially in light of the carefully argued dissenting opinion by one of the appeal-court judges.

Carry on reading.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Young Catholic Adults annual retreat 25-27 Oct

During the weekend of the 25-27 October 2019, Young Catholic Adults will be running a retreat at Douai Abbey, it will feature author and associate editor of the Catholic Herald Stephen Bullivant, Fr. Stewart Foster (Brentwood Diocese), Canon Poucin ICKSP, Dom. Jonathan Rollinson (Bemont Abbey) and Dom. Christopher Greener (Douai Abbey).

The weekend will be full-board. YCA will be running the weekend with the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge who will be holding Gregorian Chant workshops.

There will also be a Marian Procession, Rosaries, Sung Masses, Confession and socials. All Masses will be celebrated in the Extraordinary form.

Please note to guarantee your place this year Douai Abbey have requested that everyone books in 3 weeks before the start of the weekend i.e.4th Oct 2019.

More information: http://youngcatholicadults-latestnews.blogspot.co.uk/

To book:- https://bookwhen.com/youngcatholicadults-douai2019

Support the Latin Mass Society

Young Catholics deserve answers, not scorn

Cross-posted from Rorate Caeli.

LMS Pilgrims at the site of the Holy House in Walsingham on Sunday.

Recent days have seen one of those waves of attacks on Traditional Catholics on social media. I have responded to one aspect of it, that of simple charity, with a Twitter-thread you can see here. Here I want to look at another aspect of it: the kinds of things the supposedly hateful traddies are talking about.

We all know how anti-trad moral panics work. Some one claims to have experienced ‘bossy’, ‘bitter’, or ‘extreme’ views, not from an established writer, but by some Twitter or Facebook account with 12 followers, if we are allowed to know who it is. Other people then chime in to say, Wow, I’ve had the same experience: not pausing to consider the fact that, unless they live under a stone, they’ll also have had one or two bad experiences with every other category of human being on the planet with more than a handful of members.

It doesn’t seem to occur to those making this criticism that they are doing precisely what they are usually accusing Traditional Catholics of doing: of being rather quick to condemn others. Those of them who are not obscure Twitter accounts with 12 followers ought to know better. But let that pass. The other question is whether we should be having these discussions which the trads are having, and if so, what they should be like.

More photos of the Walingham Pilgrimage 2019

 Fr Terrance Naughton OFM Conv was the celebrant at the High Mass in the Catholic Shrine's Reconciliation Chapel. Since it was a Sunday, we had the Asperges, though in the Shrine it is possible to have a Votive Mass of Our Lady.



The chapel presents a challenge for photography, with strong sunlight pouring through the windows behind the altar.



We begin the procession to the site of the Medieval Shrine in the ruined Priory: the Holy Mile.

Photos of the Walsingham Pilgrimage

High Mass in St Ethelreda's, Ely. We had four priests with us so High Mass was possible every day of the pilgrimage. (Votive Mass for Pilgrims.)



Fr Michael Rowe, who is based in Perth, Australia, blesses the pilgrims before the start of the walking, in the Methodist Hall in Ely, where we had breakfast (and dinner the evening before).

SCT Summer School: more photos

Asperges at Mass on the first day (Sunday)


Benediction in St Augustine's Shrine