Farewell, Pope Benedict: official statement of the LMS

From Wikipedia Commons.

Statement on the death of Pope Benedict XVI


The Latin Mass Society learns with deep sorrow of the death of the Pontiff Emeritus, Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger.

As a theologian, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and as Pope, he made an outstanding contribution to the life of the Church, in ways which will continue to be felt far into the future.

Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass have a particular motive for gratitude towards him. In his writings before his election as Pope he laid indispensable foundations for the rehabilitation of the Church’s ancient Mass, which had been banished to a precarious existence on the periphery of the Church’s life, its supporters treated—as he himself expressed it—like ‘lepers’. As Pope, his Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, which declared that the older Missal has never been abrogated, transformed attitudes towards it, and brought it back into the heart of the Church. For a generation of priests and laity, Pope Benedict’s action remains the decisive influence on how they see the question.

Pope Benedict’s public actions reflected a great sensitivity to the liturgy, a comprehensive mastery of theology, and an intellectual honesty and courage based on profound humility.

The Latin Mass Society will be organising a Requiem of suitable solemnity for Pope Benedict in due course.

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

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Latin Mass Society: position open for Communications Officer

After six years in the job, our lovely Publicist Clare is moving on. Who would like do this job for the Latin Mass Society? From our website.

We have a vacancy for a Communications Officer

As a consequence of the impending departure of Clare Bowskill as the Society's Publicist/Communications Officer, we are seeking a replacement.

Clare has done outstanding work for the Society - often in difficult circumstances - during the time she has been with us and we are extremely grateful to her.

Working with the Society’s General Manager, Trustees, and local activists, the Communications Officer will develop a proactive communications strategy using social media and mainstream media to promote the Society, its events, and its campaigns, and to promote membership and fundraising. The Communications Officer will also be able to react to events and news stories affecting the Society, to present the Society’s position and protect its reputation.

Attendance at some key events is essential.

Status: Self-employed. Hours: variable, averaging 10 hours a week. Salary: £7,000 pa. It is envisaged that the Communications Officer will work mainly from home.

The Traditional Mass at the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy

This was organised by the Newman Society, a Catholic student society of the University. The feast was the Martyrs of Oxford University, a feast specific to the Archdiocese of Birmingham in the calendar proper to the 1962 Missal, which falls on 1st December.

We usually have a Votive Mass of this feast at the annual LMS Oxford Pilgrimage.

David Lloyd, Requiescat in pace

Update: a more recent
photo

David Lloyd, sometime Chairman of the Latin Mass Society, died early on Saturday morning following a stroke. Please pray for him.

I've not been able to consult the LMS archives yet and right now I don't have a good photograph of him, but he is in the middle of the photo above, with a moustache. Next to him on the right is his predecessor as Chairman, Christopher Inman. David was succeeded by Julian Chadwick, who was succeeded by me. The occasion was the Latin Mass Society Annual General Meeting in 2009, the first with me as Chairman.

David led the Society through the very difficult period of the 1990s in which, despite the friendly overture of Pope John Paul II's Ecclesia Dei, a hostile official attitude towards the Traditional Latin Mass on the part of most bishops and many priests seemed destined to continue forever. He never gave up, however, and he was vindicated by Pope Benedict XVI's Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, which led to the great expansion in availability of the Traditional Mass we enjoy today.

His perseverance, and that of his whole generation, was indispensable to this. Pope Benedict would not have made this concession to the Traditional movement if, at some point in the preceding decades, the movement had given up and gone home. 

David was a tough fighter for the Mass, an authentic Catholic gentleman, and a true Welshman. 

In paradisum deducant te angeli.

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Bogle and Morello on the Monarchy

James Bogle and Sebastian Morello turn their attention to more misunderstandings of the role of the Monarch in the British Constitution, which end up blaming Queen Elizabeth for failing to veto the Abortion Act of 1967, for example, despite her not having a veto.

This is the most comprehensive of similar recently published treaments and deserves to be read in full.

It begins:

The article by our friend, Theo Howard, entitled Monarchy and the Great Silence, published here at OnePeterFive, contains assertions that we believe are serious errors, which misrepresent the true position of the British monarch, not least the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Truth should be the first concern of Catholic journalists and writers, and so we wish to respond to Howard’s piece in fraternal charity for the sake of the truth.

Firstly, from a practical perspective, it is our concern that Howard’s article could do real harm by having the effect of encouraging secular republicanism (the only actual alternative available today) through the spreading of untruths, and serve to sour relations between nationalists and monarchists, particularly in communities where the issue is sensitive and even explosive. After all, it was not long ago that our United Kingdom was in conflict within its territories, namely in Northern Ireland, precisely over the question of whether that part of the Kingdom ought to be under the Monarchy or under a republic.

Read the whole thing on 1Peter5.

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Annual St Benet's Hall Requiem

As it has been every year since I started this series of annual Requiem Masses, it was celebrated by Fr Edward van den Burgh of the London Oratory, an alumnus of St Benet's Hall. The first of these took place in 2011, though we missed one or two due to Covid.

The first time I proposed such a Mass, to the last Master of the Hall who was a monk, Fr Felix Stevens, refused to allow it in the Hall chapel. However, I tried again with his successor, and it became an annual event.

This year, for the first time, it could not take place in the Hall chapel because the Hall has closed permanently. The buildings have been bought by St Hilda's College. I would like to thank Fr Nicholas Edmonds-Smith of the Oxford Oratory for allowing us to use the Oratory church -- which is a few hundred yards from where the Hall used to be.

A Reply to Cavadini, Healy & Weinandy

Rubrics erased in the Reform

Cross-posted from Rorate Caeli.

It would try to patience of readers, and more than exhaust the time I have available, to comment on the whole series of five articles published in Church Life Journal by John Cavadini, Mary Healy, and Thomas Weinandy (hereafter, CHW). Instead I will focus on just two points in the concluding article of the series: ‘The Way Forward from the Theological Concerns with the TLM Movement’.

Throughout this article they keep repeating two fundamental misunderstandings of the movement for the Traditional Mass, misunderstandings which make their analysis and recommendations beside the point. It is a principle of academic discussion that before criticising a position one must first be able to summarise it in a way which would be acceptable to those who put it forward. In this, CHW have, I am afraid, completely failed.

The first misunderstanding is in the motivation of the movement. It is all the more remarkable in that they express their own understanding as their reading of a passage from Peter Kwasniewski which says something entirely different. Dr Kwasnieski, as CHW quotes him, says this: