My weekend pilgrimage

Bust of St John Henry Newman in lay clothes in The College, Littlemore

Over the last weekend - Friday to Sunday - the Latin Mass Society hosted a series of online events and invited people to make local pilgrimages in lieu of the annual Walsingham Pilgrimage.

I am my little party--three of us, most of the time--took in two ruined Abbeys, two sites of martyrdom, the place St John Henry Newman was received into the Church, the place where he attended a public celebration of Mass for the first time, and several Catholic churches: all locked, sadly. We are fortunate in Oxfordshire, but not uniquely so: many places in England have an equally rich sacred geography, and Catholics should always make the effort to familiarise themselves with it.

Here's a little photographic essay.

'Work hard, be nice' is not racist

Children doing the Stations of the Cross at the St Catherine's Trust
Summer School in 2019.

My latest on LifeSite

One of my favorite Twitter accounts is that of Katherine Birbalsingh (@Miss_Snuffy), the Headteacher of an experimental school in a deprived part of London, Michaela Community School. The experiment involves conveying knowledge to the children in an environment in which teachers and pupils do not live in constant fear of being assaulted. Naturally, this is an almost unique experiment, and she is constantly attacked by the progressive teaching establishment. There are precedents for her approach, however, and she expressed her dismay when one of these, the American Charter School chain KIPP, explained that in light of the Black Lives Matter movement that it had decided to change its motto and discipline policy. It explained:

We are retiring “Work hard. Be nice.” as KIPP’s national slogan; it ignores the significant effort required to dismantle systemic racism, places value on being compliant and submissive, supports the illusion of meritocracy, and does not align with our vision of students being free to create the future they want.

The obvious response to this statement is that if children cling to an attitude of angry non-cooperation toward their teachers, they are not going to learn anything or do well in any exams, and if they start off in deprivation, then they will stay there. KIPP, like Miss Birbalsingh’s school, has as its mission lifting children out of poverty and desperation, and if the school is giving up on that, this is a tragedy.

Read the whole thing.

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Sacramental validity matters

The Sacrament of Confirmation. It won't be valid if your Baptism isn't valid,
and Holy Orders won't be valid if your Confirmation isn't valid.

My latest on LifeSite

The big story of the weekend came from the Archdiocese of Detroit. A certain Matthew Hood watched a video of his own baptism and realized that the officiant, a permanent deacon, had used an invalid formula: he had said ‘We baptize you’, not ‘I baptize you’. This was of special concern since Hood, now an adult, had been under the impression that he had been ordained a priest in 2017.

In some ways, the story is reassuring. It was a letter from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, under Pope Francis, insisting on the importance of these things, which set this chain of events into motion. The Archdiocese acted swiftly to have Hood properly baptized, confirmed, and ordained, and has done its best to reach other people baptized by the rogue deacon. 

Two things remain worrying, however. One is that it is impossible to know how many other people are affected by invalid sacraments. The other is that many Catholic commentators seem not to care.

Read the whole thing.

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Take part in the LMS Walking Pilgrimage online this weekend!

Every year since 2010 the Latin Mass Society has had a walking pilgrimage from Ely to Walsingham, which is about 60 miles, for the conversion of England. This year we can't do it because of the Coronavirus: it would have taken place this weekend. Instead we are doing an online version, which you can take part in not only as a participant in live-streamed Masses and devotions, spanning the Shrine of Our Lady of Willesden, Our Lady of the English Margyrs in Cambridge, and the Slipper Chapel in Walsingham, the restored Catholic shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham.

Futhermore, you can join our prayer and penance by actually walking - whereever you are.

How will it work?

Bishops' onerous obligation

My latest on LifeSite

Bishops are discouraged by all sorts of things from performing their duties with the fidelity and vigor that the nature of their job enjoins. I don’t envy them. It is often said that many priests decline the offer of episcopal promotion, and it is not difficult to see why. But there is a big difference between saying that doing the right thing is very difficult and saying it is impossible. We can be obliged to do what is very difficult. We can’t be obliged to do the impossible: that is, really impossible.

What should bishops be doing? They have an obligation to safeguard the salvation of all the Catholics in their dioceses, so they must act against spiritual dangers to their flock. Thus, they are under an obligation to denounce ideas or individuals who present an urgent threat to their people’s spiritual welfare, and remove people from roles in the diocese, including schools, where they threaten people’s spiritual welfare. 

This kind of thing must be done in an intelligent and strategic way, and there is nothing wrong in itself in a bishop minimizing bad publicity and observing his obligations as an employer and things like that. But it is difficult to avoid the impression that even many bishops who have a reputation for orthodoxy are not doing this intelligently and strategically: they are just not doing it.

Read the whole thing.

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LMS Virtual Walsingham Pilgrimage 28-30th August

LMS WALSINGHAM VIRTUAL PILGRIMAGE Friday 28th to Sunday 30th August

Every year for the last 10 years the Latin Mass Society has held an annual Pilgrimage to Walsingham, walking from Ely in Cambridgeshire to Walsingham in Norfolk over three days during the August Bank Holiday weekend. This year, because of the Covid-19 Pandemic, we have decided to continue this tradition but this year it is to be a virtual pilgrimage from Willesden in north London to Walsingham, and we invite you to get involved.

How will it work? After the success of our July Digital Conference, we will be bringing pilgrims a daily schedule of Live-streamed Masses, Meditations, Online Rosary and prayer sessions as we travel along our virtual route from Willesden to Walsingham. We invite you to join the walk in your own locations; Willesden to Walsingham is 118 miles. We need pilgrims to pledge to walk a distance during the Pilgrimage, which can be anything from half a mile to 100 miles! You can do your own pilgrimage in your back garden, in your street or even the local countryside, wherever you are in the world and whatever feels safe and suits you. With as many pilgrims as possible signed up to the virtual pilgrimage, and all praying together, we can add up the total of the miles walked, along with rosaries said and songs sung, as we pray this August to Our Lady of Walsingham. The three day event will be streamed live on our Facebook page and Youtube channel. How can l sign up? To register your interest in the pilgrimage, sign-up from our website and you will receive reminders and updates about the pilgrimage. How do I participate as a walker? If you would like to take part as a walker, you need to download the Starva app to your mobile phone. Once in the app, you should join our ‘LMS Walsingham Club’, details of how to do this are on our website. We would then like to share your experiences during the Pilgrimage online and amongst our other pilgrims. If you are unable to join in with our walk then we hope you will pray for the pilgrims.

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New webite for the Catholic Medical Association, and their annual Requiem 14th November

The CMA has a cool new website here: https://catholicmedicalassociation.org.uk/

With sponsorship from the Latin Mass Society, they are holding their annual Requiem in the traditional Domincan Rite at St Dominic's, Haverstock Hill, on Saturday 14th November at 11:30am.

https://catholicmedicalassociation.org.uk/event/requiem-mass-for-the-repose-of-the-souls-of-deceased-cma-members-2020/

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It is time to admit that French Catholic Churches are under attack

My latest on LifeSite.

A Rwandan refugee who had been employed as a caretaker has confessed to starting the July fire at Nantes Cathedral, for reasons that remain obscure. The causes of the terrible 2019 fire that severely damaged Notre Dame in Paris may never be known. Fires can start for all kinds of reasons, but there is sadly a pattern of Catholic churches in France being deliberately burned down by people with a hatred for the Church and the Faith. There are, indeed, about 1,000 attacks a year.

The British weekly The Tablet recently reported:

“Something is happening in French society that's long been neglected but is  becoming evident with these fires”, said Stefan Lunte, secretary-general of Justice and Peace Europe. “The country is becoming de-Christianized, and there are people who wish, for whatever reason, to vandalize and destroy Christian symbols ... The long-held strategy of keeping this under wraps simply does not work”.

The Justice and Peace movement is not normally associated with wild claims about culture wars, and as an adviser to the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community, Lunte must be familiar with the safe and stodgy institutional mainstream of the Catholic Church in Europe. He is clearly fed up with it.

Read the whole thing.

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