A Dominican Mass for St Thomas Aquinas

The Schola Abelis sang for a High Mass in the Dominican Rite at Blackfriars, Oxford, last Saturday.

This Mass, celebrated just because the various people involved - singers, Dominicans - simply thought it would be rather nice, attracted fifty people. These Masses now happen near the beginning of each University Term.

The Statistical decline of the Church

Inspired by some discussion on Twitter about the Church's failure to oppose the legalisation of abortion in the 1970s, effectively, I'm reposting this from April 2013. And with apologies for not posting for so long.

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

Counter-cultural young ladies at the Family Retreat

 As I wrote in the last post, contrary to the gremlins which have falsified the figures for mid-century ordinations in England and Wales on the Vocations Office website, the Catholic Church was riding high by every conceivable measure in the middle of the 20th century. Figures for ordinations and the like peak in or shortly after the 1960s. This is true all over the West: outside the Communist bloc, throughout Europe and North America. Vatican II and the subsequent reforms took place at precisely the time the decline commenced. QED.

Actually, it is not as simple as that. For the Church's difficulties coincided with very similar problems for a whole range of other organisations. As I have blogged before, membership organisations of all kinds grew rapidly in the first half of the 20th century, and began to decline in the 1970s. Not only that, but a number of other measures of 'social capital', such as whether people trust strangers or know their neighbours, rose and declined in exactly the same way. It is an extraordinary phenomenon.

Prior of Norcia to celebrate Candlemas in London

From the UK Friends of the Benedictine Monks of Norcia

To be celebrated by Prior Benedict Nivakoff of Norcia

High Mass with procession

6:30pm, Friday 2nd February, 

in the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory, W1B 5LZ

William Byrd: Mass for Four Voices

William Byrd: Senex puerum portabat

Orlando Lassus: Adorna thalamum tuum, Sion

Sung Mass for St Scholastica in Holy Rood

To be celebrated by Fr Daniel Lloyd the Parish Priest, 

and accompanied with chant from the Schola Abelis.

Sat 10th Feb, Sung Mass at 11:30am.

Holy Rood, 35 Abingdon Road, Oxford OX1 4PD

Click for a map.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Thoughts on the Mortara case

As has been well described elsewhere, in 1858, in Bologna when it was part of the Papal States under Pope Pius IX, a 6-year-old Jewish boy who had been secretly baptised by a servant when he had been thought to be at the point of death, was taken from his parents to be raised a Catholic.

This was a rare kind of case, but it had been contemplated in the civil law of the Papal States, and the decision was in accordance with longstanding practice. In the face of an international outcry, Pope Pius IX refused to restore little Edgardo to his family.

First Things has been getting more ‘traddy’ in recent years but they have jumped the shark by publishing a defence of this action of Pius IX by a Dominican theologian, Romanus Cessario. This must surely be one of the most indefensible actions by any Pope of modern times, not least because there is no dispute about the facts of the case. Nothing in the article made me remotely more sympathetic to this action of Pius IX.

LMS Latin Course booking open

Fr Richard Biggerstaff celebrating the Vetus Ordo
in the chapel of the Carmelite Retreat Centre
for the Guild of St Clare Sewing Retreat last year.

Resideintial Latin course for adults 30th July to 3rd August 2018.

Since 2009 our intensive Latin course has helped a few dozen priests and laity to brush up their Latin for liturgical and scholarly purposes, in a Catholic atmosphere and with daily Traditional Mass.

Now it is taking place in a more accessible venue with more space and lower costs. Don't miss out!

Book here!

Five days with Fr John Hunwicke and Fr Richard Bailey, not in Wales this year but in the Carmelite Retreat Centre in Boars Hill near Oxford.

Prices:
Full price is £340 (+ £30 optional single room supplement); without accommodation £290.
LMS Member £290 (+ £30 optional single room supplement); without accommodation £240.
Clergy, students and Seminarians full price £240 (+ £30 optional single room supplement); without accommodation £190.
Clergy, students and Seminarians LMS member £190 (+ £30 optional single room supplement); without accommodation £140.

Book here!

Some Latin Course students with Fr Richard Bailey last year.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Dominican Rite High Mass for St Thomas Aquinas in Oxford, 27th Jan

Saturday 27th January 2018, 11am, in Blackfriars, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LY

A votive Mass for St Thomas Aquinas. Accompanied by the Schola Abelis of Oxford.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.