Requiem for Fr Patrick Hayward: photos

Mass was celebrated by Fr Alan Robinson and accompanied by the Southwell Consort.

His funeral and burial will take place on Wednesday 12:30 pm Christchurch Priory Eltham.

Bishop Marian Eleganti to visit England: tour events

In June Bishop Athanasius Schneider did a tour at our invitation, including
St Augstine's, Ramsgate (pictured)

As part of the Latin Mass Society's 60th anniversary celebrations, we have invited the retired Swish bishop Marian Eleganti to visit us. 

A summary of this tour.

Monday 1st November, All Saints’ Day

Church of the Holy Child and St Joseph, Bedford MK40 1HU (Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe)

12 noon, Solemn Pontifical Mass with polyphony & period instruments

Buffet lunch afterwards: no need to book

Sunday 2nd November, Mass of the Sunday

SS Peter & Paul and St Philomena, 7 Atherton Street, New Brighton CH45 9LT

10:30am Solemn Pontifical Mass

Reception afterwards

Monday 3rd All Souls

St Wilfrid's, York (York Oratory) Duncombe Place, YO1 7EF

6pm Sung Mass of All Souls: Bishop Eleganti to preach.

Wedneday 5th November, Feast of the Holy Relics

SS Gregory & Augustine’s, 322 Woodstock Rd, Oxford, OX2 7NS

6pm Pontifical Low Mass with Polyphony

Friday 8th November, LMS Annual Requiem,

11am Blackfriars, St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LY, UK

Pontifical High Mass

Buffet lunch afterwards for £2! Please book here.

A High Mass of Requiem in the Oxford Blackfriars in 2010

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Oxford Pilgrimage: photos

Some photos from the LMS Oxford Pilgrimage that took place on Saturday 11th October. Mass was celebrated in the Dominican Rite by Fr Lawrence Lew OP and accompanied by the Southwell Consort.

On the Ember Days

High Mass for the Ember Saturday of Advent in Holy Rood, Oxford, 2017

I wrote this for the Catholic Herald in 2017, but it is no longer available on their website, so I thought I'll post it here. I'm a keen supporter of celebrating the Ember Days with solemnity, and look forward to a sung Ember Saturday Mass in London which is currently in the works for Advent.

Since the earliest centuries, the Church in Rome has celebrated special days of fasting spread over the year, the ‘Ember Days’. They are today a feature of the calendar of the Extraordinary Form, although they are not found in the Universal Calendar of the Ordinary Form.

They are also found in the Calendar of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, having been preserved in Anglican usage over the centuries.

The origin of the term English term ‘ember’ is unclear; it may derive from the Old English ‘ymbren’, meaning a circuit or revolution. Other European languages use some version of the Latin term, ‘Quatuor tempora’, ‘four times’. These celebrations may have been brought to England by St Augustine of Canterbury, and seem to have become established here before they spread from Rome to France and elsewhere.

The days consist of Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of a particular week. The weeks are the last full week of Advent (associated with St Lucy’s feastday, 13^th December), the first full week of Lent (that is, after Ash Wednesday), the week following Pentecost, and a week after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (14^th September). (This was adjusted to fall slightly later in 1960: since then the Ember Wednesday falls between 18^th to 24^th September.)

Discussion about Walsingham on Radio Immaculata

I had a pleasant discussion on Radio Immaculata, the platform of the Marian Franciscans, about the history of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

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LMS Walsingham Pilgrimage: photos

The LMS Walking pilgrimage took place from 21st to 25th August, with a brave group, for the second year, walked all the way from south London, starting on Sunday 17th.

Above, Mass in Cambridge, in the Dominican Rite (Fr Robert Verril OP).

One chapter of people walking from Cambridge to Ely.

Prayer in times of tragedy: in Catholic Answers

When children and their parents were shot and killed in the USA by a militant anti-religious transsexual, Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, responded to those who talked about praying in response to this terrible event, with a tweet: “These children were literally praying as they got shot at.” The post is still up, you can see it here, and others responded in a similar way.

I responded to the story with an article for Catholic Answers. It begins:

It has become a regrettable feature of American public discourse that tragedies, like mass shootings and natural disasters, are greeted by some public figures and commentators with mockery of the idea of prayer.

I seem to remember, some years ago, when Christian politicians assured the victims of some disaster of their prayers (“our thoughts and prayers are with the victims” and so on), non-Christian commentators would react angrily, saying that what the victims needed was food and shelter, or else that something should be done to mitigate such events in the future, like flood defenses or gun control.

It might, indeed, be reasonable to question politicians’ sincerity if they offer prayer as a substitute for action (see James 2:16), if that were really what was going on. Now, however, we seem to have moved on to a new phase, in which the idea of prayer in itself is ridiculed, because it didn’t save the victims. We have entered a dark place, where the principles of those scoffing at the Crucifixion have found their way into public discourse in a still majority-Christian nation: “Let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him” (Matt. 27:42).

Read it all on Catholic Answers.

I see they have turned the argument of my article into a Twitter thread, which is rather fun.

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