LMS Priest Training: training sessions

We are very fortunate in having many people with liturgical expertise, both clerics and laymen, willing to spend time training priests and servers in the ceremonies of the Traditional Mass.



Nothing could be a better use of the time and resources of the Latin Mass Society, and of our supporters and friends, than this training, especially as it is carried out by people who really know what they are doing. Not me, I should add: my contribution has been only to make a photographic record of it.

LMS Priest Training: public liturgies

I was able to attend the LMS Priest Training Conference for its final two days, on Wednesday and Thursday. In this post are photographs of the two High Masses of those days, celebrated respectively by Fr Thomas Cahill and Fr James Mawdsley FSSP.



Prior Park is an independent Catholic boarding school (on holiday last week). The splendid chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows, was built by Bishop Baines in 1830, when the site was intended to be a seminary.

Priest-training conference 2012: Abergavenny

Training Conference for Priests and Servers
Abervagenny
Mon 16th to Thurs 19th April 2012

The Latin Mass Society will be holding its eighth training conference on the older form of the Mass from 16th to 19th April 2012. With the assistance of Fr Thomas Regan OSB, it will be held at the Church of Our Lady and St Michael at Abergavenny in Wales. Accommodation will be across the road from the church, in a former convent which has been converted into a very pleasant conference centre. Abergavenny is not far from the English border and is conveniently accessed by road from the English Midlands. Abergavenny mainline station is just over two hours from London and Birmingham and around two and half hours from Manchester.

Tuition, which will be arranged in small groups, and will be tailored to suit the needs of each participant. In the case of clergy, it will be given by priests well experienced in the forma extraordinaria. It is expected that there will be groups specialising in Low Mass, Missa Cantata and Missa Solemnis.

The fee for attending will be £120, although there will be a concessionary rate of £60 for those unable to afford the full fee.

Application forms can be downloaded from the Latin Mass Society website.

The organiser is Paul Waddington:

paul@gooleboathouse.co.uk

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Buckfast Priest Training conference

This took place last week; I was unfortunately unable to get there but here is a report and some pictures.

Over thirty clerics and laymen attended the Latin Mass Society’s seventh residential training conference for the training of priests in the Traditional or Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. This conference took place from Tuesday 3 May to Friday 6 May at Buckfast Abbey in Devon, courtesy of Abbot David Charlesworth and the Benedictine community.

The programme, as in recent conferences, also provided for the training of altar servers. Fifteen servers were trained. This included a number of young men, three of whom are discerning vocations to the priesthood.

The twelve priests came from across the UK: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were all represented. Two of the priests were Polish and one was an Army chaplain who has recently seen active service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Training was given at various levels under the leadership of Fr Andrew Southwell, National Chaplain to the LMS. There was basic instruction (including Latin pronunciation where required), through to intermediate training culminating in instruction in the celebration of High Mass.

The servers followed a similar progression, learning to assist at celebrations up to High Mass.

Each day sung Mass was celebrated in the abbey church and the quality of the polyphonic singing and Latin plain chant was outstanding. The choir and schola were led by Michael Vian Clark. Abbot David Charlesworth presided in choir at the closing Votive Mass of the Holy Cross on the Friday and led the veneration of the Relic of the True Cross.

As usual at LMS conferences, the food and accommodation were appreciated for their high quality throughout.

The LMS would like to express its profound gratitude for the welcome and ready assistance given by the monks at Buckfast Abbey.

More photos here.

Ushaw Conference Centre to close immediately

I have just heard that the Conference Centre at Ushaw will close at the end of December. This means that the three bookings involving the Latin Mass Society for the Summer of 2011 will not be honoured: the Priest Training Conference booked in for August, and the Summer School for children and Latin Course for Adults booked in for July. The closure of the Seminary in June was announced not long ago, but the Conference Centre people there had been told to carry on as usual for the time being.

This is a serious blow to our immediate plans. The Latin Mass Society and the St Catherine's Trust (which runs the Summer School, sponsored by the LMS) will, however, recover; it is too late to find alternative venues for Summer 2011, but the LMS will be holding a Priest Training Conference in the spring in Buckfast, and the SCT is having its annual Family Retreat in the Oratory School in April. We'll find other venues for our other events in time.

We will be ok - but Ushaw won't. As the trade unions have been saying recently, 'some cuts don't heal.'

We've had similar experiences before: Catholic venues we thought of using closing, in whole or in part, while our plans were still being made. We are witnessing the end-game for great swathes of the Catholic Church as an institution in England and Wales. Before anyone says that people are more important than institutions, it is the disappearance of the Catholic people who have precipitated the closure of the institutions, in most cases, but now we are going to see a death spiral.

With fewer institutions to bear witness to the Faith, Catholics and those who might have become Catholics won't experience it, it won't be sustained in them as it should be. The lack of faith and the lack of warm bodies will undermine the remaining institutions. And when they close down, it will get even worse.

Of course, the sale of the buildings, many of great architectural merit and others in prime locations in cities, will keep the Church's administrators in paper clips for a long time to come. They have nothing to fear. The next generation of Catholics, by contrast, will have to start again.

No doubt the institutions now closing could have been better at embodying the Catholic Faith. But just look at those buildings, the art, the rolling acres: we're never going to get that back. The achievements of the 19th Century in making the Faith palpable to the senses will have been lost forever.

Participants of the 2010 LMS Priest Training Conference at Ushaw

Keeping up with technology

I have recently bought a new camera. This takes such enormous photos that I had to upgrade my photo processing software. It won't be long before I have to get a whole new PC, but in the meantime I am slowly getting my head around what I can do now, which I couldn't do before.

One of my prize possessions in a wide angle lens, which takes in vast panoramas at a short distance. The trouble is, it distorts the image: straight lines become curved, parallel lines converge. Like this photo of Bishop Schneider saying the Pontifical Mass at the Downside Priest Training Conference:


But I now have the technology to correct this effect:


I have more options to correct the colours as well. But I still have a great deal to learn!

The LMS in the news!

The Downside Conference gets a mention in this German-language news bulletin. Not speaking a word of German the overall effect seems rather comic. The relevant item is about 2 minutes in.

Watch out for the picture of Fr Ray Blake relaxing on a bench.

Downside: liturgies

I arrived at the conference with Bishop Schneider (who I drove there from Heathrow) on the Wednesday, and was able to assist at his private Mass.

The altar he used was, at an early stage of the construction of the Abbey Church, actually the High Altar; the raised sepulcre on the epistle side is the tomb of St Oliver Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh, one of the last Catholics martyred in England, as a result of the Titus Oates plot.

The next day he celebrated Pontifical Mass at the faldstool, with the assistance of many of the priest tutors at the conference; this was a really stunning Mass, in the wonderful and appropriate setting of Downside Abbey Church, which is a Minor Basilica.

It was well attended, especially in light of the fact that it was on a weekday in a quite remote part of England.

The conference also included Lauds in the morning, and either Vespers or Compline in the evening; we had Benediction after the Vespers. To avoid disrupting the monastic routine, we had these in the 'Old Chapel' and not the Abbey Church.


In the early mornings, the pre-dawn gloom of the Abbey Church is pierced by the glow from the beautiful side chapels where Mass is being celebrated, by priest tutors and trainees alike. Despite the large number of altars, this had to be arranged with different time-slots to fit everyone in.










On the Friday morning, Bishop Schneider celebrated his private Mass in the lovely Lady Chapel.


See the full Flickr set here; see a slide show!

Downside Priest Training Conference

I just had time to process and upload my photos to Flickr before rushing off again on Saturday on LMS business, this time in preparation for the Walsingham Walking Pilgrimage among other things. Details are being finalised; the indefatigable Paul Smeaton has actually walked some of the route to check it all out. I'm glad to see a good number of bloggers have already posted either my pictures or Leo Darroch's - thanks Fr Ray (who was actually there), Fr Tim, Fr Michael Brown, Fr John Boyle, and anyone else I've missed.

The Downside conference was really wonderful. The Abbey is a marvellous place to have the training and private Masses; there are about a dozen side altars, and the sacristy knocks London Colney's into a cocked hat: it is actually set up for dozens of priests to say Masses, and not just four or five.

Here are some pictures of the training itself.

On the left is Canon Tuckwell, Administrator of Westminster Cathedral, learning the Traditional Mass.

The priests were addressed by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the Kazakstan-based author of 'Dominus Est', which addresses the question of the manner of receiving communion.

He also gave a very fascinating speach after dinner, in part about his experiences in Kazackstan.

Not only priests, but also a group of servers were being trained. A great many servers are needed each morning (ideally) to serve the private Masses, so this initiative, under the banner of the Society of St Tarcisius, made a lot of sense.



The conference was attended by 20 trainee priests; the trainers included Fr Andrew Southwell, the LMS' National Chaplain, Fr Bede Rowe, the LMS Chaplain for the South West, Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP (joined by The Rev Matthew McCarthy, an FSSP Seminarian), and Fr Kunkel ICKSP. I think this is the fist time that LMS Chaplains and priests from both of these great traditional priestly societies have collaborated in a training event of this kind.

Latin Mass Society Training Conference at Downside Abbey

The Latin Mass Society has recently announced its next Conference for training priests to say the usus aniquior of the Roman Rite, the Traditional Mass, to be held at Downside Abbey.

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Downside Abbey is in Stratton on the Fosse, Somerset; the dates of the conference are are Tuesday 10 to Friday 13 August. The inclusive fee is £115; we have it on good (episcopal!) authority that parish priests can claim this from parish funds as a parish expense. In any case this is enormously subsidised by the Latin Mass Society and represents very good value for money.

Priests interested in attending should contact the LMS office on 020 7404 7284 or e mail: info@latin-mass-society.org.

Yesterday I was in Downside with our Treasurer, Paul Waddington, who is the principle organiser of these events and took a few photos. We were shown around by Fr Boniface, and although I know the Abbey Church well I was fascinated to see the magnificent sacristy, shown in the pictures below.

As as Ushaw there are many richly decorated side chapels intended for private Masses, including the shrine to St Oliver Plunket, and Abbey Church itself is one of the very finest Catholic ecclesiastical buildings in Britain.



The Conference will also have the use of the 'Old Chapel', used by the monks before the Abbey Church was built, and the Crypt.

Among the tutors at the Conference will be Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP, who has been very dedicated to the cause of training priests at successive conferences, and Fr Bede Rowe, who is Parish Priest of nearby Warminster and now the LMS' Chaplain for the South West.

Colin Mawby, the well known composer and former Directors of Music at Westminster Cathedral, will be available to teach priests the chant, as he was in the conference the LMS held at London Colney - as shwon in the picture below.


Finally, here is a statue of the Virgin and Child in the Crypt.

Pictures of Ushaw 2010

There are lots of pictures already up from Fr Brown at Forest Murmers (there's also some commentary from our Leeds Representative, who was there; I took these during the last two days, when I was there.

You don't have to be an archaeologist to see what kind of liturgy Ushaw was built for.


The first thing I was able to attend was Vespers and Benediction on Thursday - notice the enormous monstrance on its throne above the High Altar in St Cuthbert's Chapel, where the crucifix normally stands.


This was followed by the Conference Dinner, at which we had speeches, including a very interesting reminiscence from Fr Elkin, who had attended Ushaw as a boy and a seminarian in the 1950s. He told us the place was infested with rats, so not all the changes since then have been negative! The junior seminary has long gone, and instead of 400 students they now have a total of 24 seminarians. Fr Elkin, who has been a long-term supporter of the Traditional Mass, summed up by saying that 'our future lies in the past'. He got a standing ovation.

Early the next morning the priests were saying their private Masses, which is always a wonderful thing to see, on the numerous tiny chapels intended for this purpose but little used since the liturgical reform. These chapels are exquisite. This one below was unusable last year, because it was being used to store a drum kit.


This was followed by Lauds, which was supported by a liturgical schola led by Mike Forbester. The size of the chapel means that you need a good number of singers for it to work well.


This was followed by an open forum for discussion of how the conferences should be developed. From this, and from other conversations, it was very evident how much the conferences are apreciated both for the knowledge of the Traditional Mass they impart but also for the social aspect. They are a great boost to morale for the priests, who often feel rather isolated in their dioceses, but through the conferences and similar events (such as Fr de Malleray's retreats for priests) are establishing a network of like-minded priests.

Several reiterated the point made, about the London Colney Conference last autumn by the Catholic Herald's 'Pastor Iuventus', that meeting other traditionally-minded priests at these events shatters the negative stereotype which was fixed in their minds - the other priests interested in the Old Mass are not weirdos, fanatics, political extremists or liturgical obsessives. They are perfectly normal and sane. Clearly, as this fact gradually gets out, more priests will be inclined to attend.

This was followed by a splendid Solemn Mass, a votive Mass in honour of the Patron of Ushaw, the great St Cuthbert, which was accompanied by both a liturgical schola and polyphonic choir.

It became harder to get good photos from the loft where I was stationed, as the sanctuary filled with ever-denser incense!

The priests taught at this conference go out into the world - into their parishes across England and Wales, in some cases into Scotland. We also had a delightful South African priest, and two charming young priests were sent to us personally by Archbishop Ranjith of Columbo, Sri Lanka - better known from his days at the Congregation for Divine Worship in Rome.

Archbishop Ranjith sent us, by them, a very thoughtful letter of support and encouragment, which was read out at the Conference Dinner.

These Conferences are always inspiring occasions, and this was no exception. It is truly wonderful to think of the 75 priests now saying the Traditional Mass thanks to previous conferences; as time goes on these will have an exponential effect, as they influence, and even train, other priests in their areas, young men interested in the priesthood, and the faithful. The fruits of the Motu Proprio are there to see.

Slideshow of my photos here; see the set here.

Altar-rail news from South Africa

Fr Gregory Charnock attended one of the Latin Mass Society's Priest Training Conferences and has been putting his new knowledge to good use in his native South Africa. With very little money he has installed altar rails, to make his church more suitable for the Traditional Mass; these were unveiled in time for Christmas.



Congratulations to him and to his parish! Please say a prayer for them.