Review: Unwanted Priest, by Fr Bryan Houghton

This appears in the current Mass of Ages, magazine of the Latin Mass Society.

It is available to buy from the LMS online shop: Unwanted Priest | Latin Mass Society (lms.org.uk)

Fr Bryan Houghton: Unwanted Priest: The Autobiography of a Latin Mass Exile

Another Traditionalist Classic from Angelico is Fr Houghton’s autobiographical Unwanted Priest. With this the publisher has secured a first, however, for although it was published in French in 1990 (as Pretre rejeté), the English version never made it into print.

This has now been put right, and Houghton’s life story is available in both languages. It is a fascinating one. The son of Protestant English parents, he had much of his education in France, and became a Catholic as a young man. He had independent financial means, and consistently used this to further the apostolates he was given as a priest. While working for Northampton Diocese, he was respected as an intellectual and also elected Dean by his brother priests. Nevertheless, he was the only priest in England and Wales to resign from his position rather than celebrate the Novus Ordo Missae, in 1969. He spent his remaining years in France, where he supported an early Latin Mass apostolate, with the tacit permission of the local bishop, in a privately owned chapel. He wrote two novels well worth reading: Mitre and Crook and Judith’s Marriage, and died in 1992.

Fr Houghton’s description and analysis of what was going on in his lifetime are sober and perceptive. He distances himself from Archbishop Lefebvre, but is merciless in his assessment of the progressive faction which led the changes to the liturgy and went on to attempt a revolution in the conception of the priesthood.

Like Tito Cassini [author of Torn Tunic], Fr Houghton was particularly sensitive to the experience of the laity, and understood the laity’s mode of engagement with the liturgy as few priests of his generation did. Unlike them, as a convert he had been an adult Catholic layman himself: seminarians of that time typically went from one enclosed Catholic institution, a school, to another, the seminary, at a very young age. The laity, Fr Houghton realised, did not participate in the Mass despite the Latin and the obscurity: rather, the sacredness evinced by the ancient Mass created a setting for them to engage in contemplative prayer.

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Review: Faith of our Fathers, by Chessman

This appears in the new Mass of Ages, magazine of the Latin Mass Society.

This is available to buy from the LMS online bookshop: Faith of Our Fathers | Latin Mass Society (lms.org.uk)

Stuart Chessman: Faith of our Fathers: A Brief History of Catholic Traditionalism in the United States.

The United States is the location of a major part of what we can call the Traditional Movement, but over the decades it has not had a single, continuing organisation or institution to represent it or, for that matter, to keep records. Stuart Chessman, who bloggs at The Society of St Hugh of Cluny, has put together a number of articles about the American movement’s past and present, which will do something to prevent some important events and individuals it disappearing from public consciousness, notwithstanding the geographical bias of the book.

Chessman explains the early role of those ‘conservative’ Catholics who refused to get involved in the liturgical debate; the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual collapse of Triumph magazine; and its partial replacement by the Latin Mass Magazine. Chessman notes the eagerness of Triumph to rally round the papacy following the condemnation of artificial contraception in 1968, which led to a tension in the magazine’s position as it continued to document the institutional failures of the Church in America.

A similar rallying to the establishment cause by conservative Catholics took place in the latter years of Pope John Paul II’s reign. This was led by Opus Dei and the Legionaires of Christ, and took place despite the poor episcopal treatment of conservative institutions like Ignatius Press and EWTN. It was particularly unfortunate in blinding some conservative Catholic commentators to the grim beginnings of the clerical abuse revelations. Relations between conservative and traditionalist Catholics have, since then, been transformed for the better.

One useful feature of the book is its inclusion of some historical documents. Bishop Donohoe of Fresno threatening excommunication to traditionalists in 1976; a letter from Archbishop Weakland which had to be presented by those attending a permitted Traditional Mass in 1985; a questionnaire designed to ascertain the theological soundness of would-be Old Mass-goers from the Archdiocese of New York from the same year; and so on. It is well to be reminded of some of the sillier aspects of the persecution of Catholics who, as Pope Benedict was later to describe them, were ‘totally rooted in the faith of the Church’, and wished only to worship in continuity with their predecessors in the Faith.

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Review: The Great Betrayal by Hugh Ross Williamson

I am going to publish a series of reviews of short books suitable for light(ish) summer holiday reading, which appear in the current Mass of Ages, magazine of the Latin Mass Society.

This is available to buy from the LMS online bookshop.

Hugh Ross Williamson: The Great Betrayal: Thoughts on the Deformation of the Mass 

Hugh Ross Williamson, a founding figure of the Latin Mass Society, composed two important pamphlets in the early days of the movement: The Modern Mass: A Reversion to the Reforms of Cranmer (1969) and The Great Betrayal: Some Thoughts on the Invalidity of the New Mass (1970). These have been republished by Arouca Press, with Preface by his daughter, Julia Ashendon, and a Foreword by me.

The central concern of both pamphlets is the replacement of liturgical texts with clear theological implications, notably on the sacrificial nature of the Mass, with ambiguity and silence. This happened above all in the new Eucharistic Prayers and the Offertory.