Traditional Catholics in the Synod on Synodality

A newly ordained priest, of the Fraternity of St Peter, concluding his first,
Traditional, Mass in Munich. Fr Gwilym Evans comes from Wales.

Traditional Catholics' contributions to the Synod on Synodality have not been entirely ignored. The Synthesis document for England and Wales includes this paragraph:

(viii) Traditionalists 72. Although very few in number, a sense of grievance and marginalization is strongly expressed by those who worship using the Missal of 1962. Traditionalists complain of “sadness and anger” at the restrictions they believe were imposed by Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes, which restored to bishops the regulation of the provision of preSecond Vatican Council liturgies. 89 Adherents of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) complain of the “watering down” of liturgical devotion in eucharistic celebrations following the Council, and fear that the Church has capitulated to “modernistic” ideas. 90 In response to questions about marginalisation and exclusion, both TLM adherents and those committed to “maintaining traditional Catholic teaching against what they interpret as harmful modifications” feel “badly treated by the bishops and by Pope Francis“ and “saddened by a sense that their views are habitually denigrated and their voices left unheard and unanswered.”91

This appears under other categories: the Traveller Community, People of Colour, the Divorced and Remmaried, and so on.

Fr Gwilym Evans FSSP: First Mass, photos

Cross-posted between Rorate Caeli and LMS Chairman. Photos by me.

Fr Gwilym Evans FSSP celebrated his First Mass on Sunday 18th, the Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi. Although Corpus Christi is a public holiday in Bavaria, and a public procession had taken place on the day in Munich, on the Sunday another procession took place, organised by one of the parishes, the Peterskirche. After his Mass, Fr Evans and his congregation joined this procession.

His Mass took place in the small but extraordinary Baroque 'Asamkirche', which has relics (in a waxwork) of St John Nepomuk above the altar. It was a Low Mass.

FSSP Ordinations in Bavaria: photos

Photo by Monika Rheinschmitt

Cross-posted between Rorate Caeli and LMS Chairman.

On Saturday 18th June, Archbishop Wolfgang Haas of Vaduz (Liechtenstein) ordained two members of the Fraternity of St Peter to the priesthood. They stand either side of the Archbishop in the above photograph: Daniel Bruckwilder, left, and Gwilym Evans, right. Fr Bruckwilder is from Germany; I and many others from the UK attended this event because Fr Evans is from Wales. He has attended many traditional events in England over the years, particularly the Latin Mass Society's walking pilgrimage to Walsingham: and will do so again this year.

Most of the photos in this post are by my Una Voce International (FIUV) colleague, Monika Rheinschmitt; a few are by me. Readers can click through to Flickr albums of more of her photographs of this event and mine. Tomorrow (Friday) I will post some photographs of Fr Evans' First Mass in Munich.

The ordinations took place some distance from the FSSP Seminary at Wigratzbad, Bavaria, in the Church of our Lady of the Assumption, Turkheim.

Everything about the event was meticulously prepared and executed; it was truly uplifting. 

Latin and NT Greek intensive week with the LMS

Mass at Park Place at the Sewing Retreat

Booking is open for our intensive study week of either liturgical Latin or New Testament Greek, 8th August - Saturday 13th August 2022.

The venue is Park Place Pastoral Centre, a Catholic retreat centre in Hampshire (Wickham, Fareham, Hampshire PO17 5HA).

• Find your own level with our experienced Latin tutors: Fr John Hunwicke and Ethan Freeman will be dividing students into beginners and the more advanced.
• Matthew Spencer will be teaching the New Testament Greek, as he has been doing online.
• A relaxed and Catholic atmosphere focusing on the liturgical and scriptural uses of the languages.
• A comfortable setting, with en suite single and twin rooms, and rather good food -- which we've experienced before in the Guild of St Clare Sewing Retreat.
• There are huge discounts for clergy and seminarians for the Latin.

The Teaching of the Church on Fashion: review

Cross-posted from Rorate Caeli

Christian Fashion in the Teaching of the Church, by Virginia Coda Nunziante (Calx Mariae
Publishing, 2022) pp108.

This book is being launched in London, in the St Wilfrid Hall of the London Oratory, on Thursday 9^th June, and I have been asked by the publishers, Calx Mariae Publications, to review it in advance of this event. please click here for more details.

Buy it here.

This short book comprises the author’s own introduction to the subject, and materials drawn from the speeches and writing of Popes Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII, with two final contributions from Cardinals Siri and Colombo. The documents date from 1914 to 1971. They end at this point because the Popes after Pius XII do not seem to have addressed the issue. Although small, therefore, this collection is comprehensive, at least in terms of the modern era, and for this reason extremely helpful to anyone interested in the subject.

LMS Pilgrimage to Harvington

Last Sunday I joined a pilgrimage to Harvington Hall, with Mass in the parish church which is close to it. Sung Mass was celebrated by Fr Douglas Lamb.

Harvington Hall, a moated Tudor manor house, has the largest number of surviving 'priest holes' (priest hides) of any house in the country: seven. Many are very impressive: hidden under stairs which can be lifted up on hinges; up a fake chimney; and behind a swinging beam. Many of them were built by the Jesuit lay-brother, St Nicholas Owen, who himself was martyred in 1606.

Pentecost: for Catholic Answers

The Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles: from
the Rosary Walk at the Shrine at Aylesford, the destination
of a traditional walking pilgrimage this weekend.

Catholic Answers has published an 'explainer' type article by me on Pentecost.

It begins:

Pentecost comes from the Greek pentekoste, which means “fiftieth.” The ancient Jewish feast of Pentecost (as it is occasionally called in the Greek Old Testament) is also called the Feast of Weeks or of First Fruits, in Hebrew, Shavuot. In the year of Jesus’ passion, this was also 50 days after the Resurrection (more or less) and was the occasion of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the apostles. The Ascension had taken place forty days after the Resurrection, and Pentecost followed a nine-day period of prayer and interior preparation for this event by the apostles, in the Upper Room, the Cenacle, in Jerusalem.

Holy Scripture and the Church’s liturgical calendar alike rejoice in numerology, the symbolism of numbers. Forty is a period of preparation: the Hebrews were forty years in the desert before they came to the Promised Land; Jesus, like Moses and Elijah before key moments of their missions, spent forty days in the desert in preparation for his public ministry; we have forty days of Lent. Fifty is associated with completion and eternity: the fifty days of Eastertide represent, in a sense, the end of the story, the “happily ever after,” as well as the period between Easter and Pentecost.

Read the whole thing there.

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