Oxford Graduates: Oxford's dead need YOU

The Altar in the St Thomas More Chapel
set up for the EF Mass.

Reposted: final reminder. I hope to finish this off this week, the final week of Term.

Any Oxford graduate, former visiting student, or current student, or current or former employee, who would like to support a petition for a Traditional Sung Requiem in the Catholic Chaplaincy for their deceased predecessors and contemporaries, please email

info@lms.org.uk

with 'Oxford Chaplaincy' as the subject and your name, address, and current or former college or whatever.

Requiem for Alison Davis, 3rd Dec in Corpus Christi Maiden Lane

Corpus Christi Maiden Lane, Wednesday 3rd December. Mass will be at 6:30pm and will be High Mass, with Deacon and Subdeacon. More details here.

Alison Davis was a truly remarkable woman, whose life illustrates the power of grace to turn intolerable suffering into something beautiful. You can read her Telegraph obituary here and a blog dedicated to her here.

On the first anniversary of her death, let us lend her our prayers. And with all the Holy Souls, may she pray for us too.

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

Position Papers: 2nd Edition published of hard-copy book

Over the last three years, the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce, the world-wide federation of Una Voce groups, has been publishing executive summaries on specific aspects of the Traditional Mass: why we don’t have Altar Girls, why we don’t give Communion from the Chalice, why we worship towards the East, why we have a season of preparation for Lent, what happened to Holy Week in the 1950s, and many, many more: 23 short articles, with lots of references to recent official documents, and the latest scholarship.

They have been published individually online, but here is you chance to buy the book, with all 23 little papers. The perfect gift for your pastor, the perfect briefing for those who don’t have time to read a long tome but want a carefully researched answer to the questions people ask about the Vetus Ordo.

The series is on-going; look out for the next papers which will be published first on Rorate Caeli blog.

PRAISE FOR THE FIUV PAPERS:

'let me say simply that reading and ruminating over the FIUV Papers on the Liturgy could serve as a marvellous primer for how to address what often ends up being controversial in a very different and respectful manner.' Archbishop Thomas Gullickson, Papal Nuncio to the Ukraine.

Bill Murray on the liturgical reform

I'm not the sort of person who regards the words of the famous as having more weight than the words of people who actually know what they are talking about. But this is a personal impression, and it is interesting.

'I tend to disagree with what they call the new mass. I think we lost something by losing the Latin. Now if you go to a Catholic mass even just in Harlem it can be in Spanish, it can be in Ethiopian, it can be in any number of languages. The shape of it, the pictures, are the same but the words aren’t the same.”

Isn’t it good for people to understand it? “I guess,” he says, shaking his head. “But there’s a vibration to those words. If you’ve been in the business long enough you know what they mean anyway. And I really miss the music – the power of it, y’know? Yikes! Sacred music has an affect on your brain.” Instead, he says, we get “folk songs … top 40 stuff … oh, brother….”'
The whole interview is here.

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

LMS Wall Calendar

ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

The Society's ever-popular wall calendar, showing feast days on their traditional dates, according to the 1962 Missal. In addition to the feasts in the universal calendar, we have also included many English and Welsh saints that are only celebrated locally.

• Feast Days in accordance with the 1962 Missal

• Pictures of Traditional Catholic events in England and Wales and overseas
• More space to write your appointments etc.
• Spiral-bound with hanging loop (easy to change months)
• Printed on low-reflective art paper
• Spacious A3 size (no more staples across the centre)

£8.00 plus p&p Click here

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

Photos from the Summorum Pontificum Rome Pilgrimage

These are from Mass celebrated by Cardinal Burke in the Chapel of the Throne in St Peters, 30th October. The full set, from the photographer Christopher Owens, is here.

The problem of censorship

LMS Oxford Pilgrimage procession outside Worcester College.

Further to the extraordinary spectacle of an Oxford College, Christ Church, closing down a 'for and against' debate on 'abortion culture' set up by a student society, contributions to the discussion about censorship - for that is the name of the beast - have come in from the pro-abortion invitee, Brendan O'Neil in The Spectator, and Tim Squirrel, of all things the President of the Cambridge Union (a debating society), who thinks free speech and, as far as I can see, thought of all kind, should be suppressed, writing int the Cambridge student rag, The Tab.

Readers can go over there and see for themselves if I am exaggerating. Mr Squirrel tells us that, shock, horror, 'there are some individuals whose presence in a space can make people feel unsafe.' And, of course, 'universities are also our homes'. Ergo, the touchiest person in a University of over 10,000 souls should have a veto over every public conversation in the place - assuming this touchy person is touchy in a politically correct way. At least, Mr Squirrel has better be assuming that, or else disagreement between the touchy could lead to the exactly kind of debate Mr Squirrel is trying to suppress.