Recent training events

The last two Saturdays have seen four Latin Mass Society events. On Saturday 19th September we had a Society of St Tarcisius server training day in St Mary Moorfields in London, with twenty students and four instructors: the most we have ever had. These always run in parallel with a Guild of St Clare vestment-mending day.

On Saturday 26th September we had a chant training day in Oxford, under the umbrella of the Gregorian Chant Network, which attracted 30 people wanting to learn about Chant. We had a splendid Ember Saturday High Mass.

On the same day, in London the Guild of St Clare had a packed training day, learning how to make mitres. As usual with learning a new technique, they made miniature ones as an exercise.

This is just a small illustration of the enormous amount of work being done by the Latin Mass Society. If you want to find our more about the Guild of St Clare, the Society of St Tarcisius, or the Gregorian Chant Network, they each have their own webpages and mailing: just click on the links.

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Article in The Tablet

The Tablet asked me for an article for their blog about the Walsingham, and I obliged.

It begins:

What can draw 240 Catholics over the lanes and paths of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk from Ely to Walsingham?

They ranged in age from 12 to 90, with many young adults and many recent converts and reverts, people deepening their Faith, or discovering it, in the company of the Traditional Latin Mass. They also discovered the traditions of Latin chants and English hymnody, and some hard truths about wet socks and blisters.

A pilgrimage is a way of honouring Christ or the saints. The more trouble we go to about it, to honour them, the greater the gift we are giving them. They don’t need our gifts, but it is good for us to give them: it creates, within us, a better ordering of priorities. It is good, also, for others to see the trouble we are going to, and for wider communities to take part in these efforts. We can’t increase the glory God enjoys in heaven, but as George Herbert expressed it, “In our hearts, though not in heaven, we can raise Thee.”

Read this whole thing there.

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SCT Summer School 2026

Another event which left me too busy to blog about was the St Catherine's Trust Summer School, which took place for the first time in Park Place Pastoral Centre in Wickham, not far from Southampton.

As usual our chaplain was Fr Andrew Southwell.

Walsingham 2026: Photos

I've been too busy to post about the things I have been doing but for the record here are some photos of this year's LMS Pilgrimage to Walsingham. We had 240 pilgrims, by some distance the most ever. Some walked from St Bede's in south London; most started in Ely.

 

 Our final Mass was not in the Catholic Shrine, but in the ruins of Walsingham Priory, where the Holy House (the original shrine) was until destroyed in 1536.

The LMS at We Believe

Last weekend the Latin Mass Society had a presence at the second We Believe Festival, which took place at Oscott Seminary near Birmingham.

Anne Widdecombe, RIP

Me in First Things. It begins:

Widdecombe’s murder has been a tremendous shock to British politics. She was the most prominent British Catholic politician whose faith actually informed her politics—unlike former prime ministers Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, or our presumptive prime minister, Andy Burnham. She converted to Anglicanism in her thirties, and to Catholicism in 1993, and she spent her long political career defending human life and all sorts of causes that she considered just. At the same time, she appeared on numerous television programs and never took herself too seriously. This combination of qualities—a sense of fun, a disinterested commitment to justice, and a powerful supernatural faith—is one that her detractors are completely unable to understand.

Read the whole thing there.

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Five Years of Traditionis Custodes

Me in the Catholic Herald: this is the conclusion.

Cardinal Arthur Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, will forever be associated with his Dicastery’s explanation of why details of Traditional Masses should be excluded from parish newsletters:

“There is no intention in these provisions to marginalise the faithful who are rooted in the previous form of celebration: they are only meant to remind them that this is a concession to provide for their good (in view of the common use of the one lex orandi of the Roman Rite) and not an opportunity to promote the previous rite.”

If the aim of Traditionis custodes was indeed to marginalise the faithful rooted in the Traditional Mass, then it might be said to have had a measure of success, though this has come at the expense of promoting the “previous rite” by putting a bright spotlight on it. Otherwise it is much more difficult to see what it has achieved, or still might achieve, that Pope Francis and his advisers might actually have wanted to achieve.

It is time for Pope Leo to clear up the mess.

 Read the whole thing there.

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