Saturday, April 30, 2022

Triduum Photos

IMG_9906

I didn't get round to posting these until now.

The celebrant was Fr Michael Cullinan, in St Mary Moorfields in the City of London. They were accompanied by Charles Finch with his group, Cantores Missae.

These first ones are from Good Friday.

IMG_9912 

Friday, April 22, 2022

More mischevious nonsense from The Pillar

Cross-posted from Rorate Caeli.

April 14th this year was Maundy Thursday. It is an interesting day for The Pillar to choose to publish a shoddy attack on two Catholic intellectuals, Prof Thomas Pink and Fr Edward Waldstein, for their alleged 'integralist' views, in an interview by Charlie Camosy with Joseph Capizzi.

Plant the critique out there in public, on the day in the year the victims are least likely to notice it quickly or react before the social media circus has moved on. Better still, if someone--like me--does notice and uses Twitter to call on the Pillar's editors, J.D. Flynn and Edward Condon, to account for it over the following 24 hours, they can just piously not react for the duration.

So here I am drawing attention to this interview once again. I happen know the targets of this piece. Prof Pink is a Patron of the Latin Mass Society. I know Fr Waldstein a little from the Roman Forum Summer Symposium. There are a great many would-be lay intellectual leaders of the Catholic world, and the field is quite crowded even if you focus on the Traditional Catholic niche, but Prof Pink and Fr Waldstein are the real thing: they are established and respected academics who are orthodox Catholics and engaged in some of the fundamental issues of the day. Prof Pink is one of the foremost Catholic intellectuals in the UK. 

Accordingly, I suppose it is not surprising that they should be the focus of asinine criticisms. Towards the end the interviewer Camosy tries to draw in a gaggle of other names into the discussion, but Capizzi doesn't really rise to the bait.

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Monday Masses in London

IMG_9908

Music and feasts/ Votive Masses are now confirmed for the 6:30pm Masses in Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane (Covent Garden, WC2E 7NA) in London up to the end of August.

These are accompanied by the Southwell Consort with polyphony or by the Houghton Schola with chant, under Dominic Bevan.


  • 2nd May: St ATHANASIUS

Missa Euge Bone, Tye

Surrexit Pastor Bonus, L’Heritier

Dum Transisset, Taverner 


  • 23rd May: VOTIVE MASS FOR PEACE

Missa Vidi Speciosam, Victoria 

O Maria Vernans Rosa, Clemens non Papa

Christe qui Lux est Dies, White

Thursday, March 31, 2022

FIUV Magazine, Gregorius Magnus, now out!

Download the pdf here; see it optimised for mobile devices on ISSUU here.

The latest Gregorius Magnus includes articles from Malawi, Australia, New Zealand, and Ukraine, plus our regular selection of magazine articles from member associations in England, Germany, and France, book reviews, responses to the Responsa ad dubia, and a photographic report on the 2021 Summorum Pontificum--Ad Petri sedem Pilgrimage.

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Sponsorship for Royal School of Needlework Course from the Guild of St Clare

IMG_0419
One of our sponsored students, helping to make a replacement stole
for a violet Low Mass set belonging to the Latin Mass Society
Traditional hand embroidery techniques, required for restoration of old vestments and the construction of new ones in the traditional way, was saved from oblivion in England by the Royal School of Needlework (as it soon became), which was founded in 1872. Today the RSN is commissioned to restore antique fabrics for museums and to create things for state occasions, such as the Coronation, as well as private commissions. They pass on these precious skills to new generations of students in their courses. including the skills of traditional vestment-making.

Their Certificate in Hand Embroidery, in which students master four different techniques by doing a project in each one, could be regarded as the entry level for serious work. 

It is, naturally, expensive and time-consuming. The good news is that the Certificate Course is also extremely flexible, making it possible for students to do it at times convenient to them, over a longer of shorter period of time. 

The even better news is that in association with the Latin Mass Society (and a benefactor) the Guild of St Clare is offering sponsorship which will pay up to 50% of the tuition fees.

We have already sponsored two students, who are now nearing the end of the Certificate. This year we will be able to sponsor two students.

The deadline for applications in 24th June 2022. More information here.

A Certificate Course piece of work by the other of our current sponsored students.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

A prayer for Friday's Consecration of Russia

149 - IMG-20190715-WA0161
On Friday the Holy Father is going to consecrate Russia, and Ukraine, 'especially', to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in union (at the Pope's request) with the bishops of the world.

There is little we can do to make the consecration more perfect from a spiritual point of view as far the words and intentions of the hierarchy are concerned. But we can join in as best we can on our own behalfs.

No official prayer has been suggested, but here is one from the Raccolta--the old handbook of indulgenced prayers--which seems suitable to say on Friday. I have just added a phrase to specify the intention. It was promulgated by Pope Pius XII in 1942.

Pope Francis will start his act of consecration at 5pm Rome time (4pm here in the UK).

--------------------------------------

Prayer of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

O Queen of the most holy Rosary, help of Christians, refuge of the human race, victorious in all the battles of God, we prostrate ourselves in supplication before thy throne, in the sure hope of obtaining mercy and of receiving grace and timely aid in our present calamities, not through any merits of our own on which we do not rely, but only through the immense goodness of thy mother’s Heart. In thee and in thy Immaculate Heart, at this grave hour of human history, do we put our trust; to thee we consecrate ourselves, not only with all of Holy Church, which is the mystical body of thy Son Jesus, and which is suffering in so many of her members, being subjected to manifold tribulations and persecutions, but also with the whole world, torn by discords, agitated with hatred, the victim of its own iniquities.

Be thou moved by the sight of such material and moral degradation, such sorrows, such anguish, so many tormented souls in danger of eternal loss! Do thou, O Mother of mercy, obtain for us from God a Christ-like reconciliation of the nations, as well as those graces which can convert the souls of men in an instant, those graces which prepare the way and make certain the long desired coming of peace on earth. O Queen of peace, pray for us, and grant peace unto the world in the truth, the justice, and the charity of Christ.

Above all, give us peace in our hearts, so that the kingdom of God may spread its borders in the tranquillity of order. Accord thy protection to unbelievers and to all those who lie within the shadow of death; cause the Sun of Truth to rise upon them; may they be enabled to join with us in repeating before the Saviour of the world: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” Give peace to the nations that are separated from us by error or discord, and in a special manner to those peoples who profess a singular devotion toward thee; bring them back to Christ’s one fold, under the one true Shepherd. Obtain full freedom for the holy Church of God; defend her from her enemies; check the ever-increasing torrent of immorality; arouse in the faithful a love of purity, a practical Christian life, and an apostolic zeal, so that the multitude of those who serve God may increase in merit and in number.

Finally, even as the Church and all mankind were once consecrated to the Heart of thy Son Jesus, because He was for all those who put their hope in Him an inexhaustible source of victory and salvation, so in like manner do we consecrate ourselves, and the nations of Russia and Ukraine, forever to thee also and to thy Immaculate Heart, O Mother of us and Queen of the world; may thy love and patronage hasten the day when the kingdom of God shall be victorious and all the nations, at peace with God and with one another, shall call thee blessed and intone with thee, from the rising of the sun to its going down, the everlasting “Magnificat” of glory, of love, of gratitude to the Heart of Jesus, in which alone we can find truth, life, and peace.

(Pope Pius XII, 17 Nov 1942: with the addition of the words in red).

Support the Latin Mass Society

Friday, March 11, 2022

Penance: for Catholic Answers

IMG_0432
Blow the trumpet in Sion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly. Gather together the people, sanctify the church, assemble the ancients, gather together the little ones, and them that suck at the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth from his bed, and the bride out of her bridal chamber. (Joel 2.15-7)

My latest for Catholic answers.

Presented with the imperative to “do something” for Lent, a familiar response is to “give something up.” In itself, this is a healthy enough instinct. Depending on your lifestyle, giving up alcohol, or even chocolate, can be a reminder of the nature of the season and a noticeable sacrifice. Alternatively, people think of giving up something bad, trying to overcome a habitual sin. This is laudable, but penance is the sacrifice of something good, not something bad. Catholics should be able to go beyond both kinds of “giving up.”

The imperatives of Lent in particular, and of the Christian life in general, are the eminent good works of prayer, penance, and almsgiving. These really are good works—works that earn us merit. These works will cancel out temporal punishment we would otherwise suffer in purgatory, and add to our glory in heaven, and we can offer them for the good of the holy souls in purgatory and for the conversion of sinners. Good works in this sense are possible only if we are in a state of grace (sanctifying grace), and they will themselves be done in and through God’s assisting grace (actual grace). When we do them, we may say with St. Paul, it is not we who do them, but God who does them through us (Phil. 2:13). They are in fact a gift of God to us—but when God gives us something, we really do possess it.

Read it all there.

Support the Latin Mass Society