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Bishop McKenzie of Dunkeld (which includes Dundee) has ordered the Marian Franciscan Friars and Sisters, whose communities occupy different parts of the Lawside Convent complex in Dundee, to leave the diocese within six months.
Their finding a place to go will be a challenge. Please pray for them.
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All in the basement of Our Lady of the Assumption, Warwick Street.
Please enter from the Golden Square side: steps lead down directly to the hall:24 Golden Square, W1F 9JR near Piccadilly Tube Station (click for a map).
Doors open at 6:30; talk at 7pm. £5 on the door for expenses.
Refreshments provided.

Feb 28, Nina Power: 'Overcoming Modernity's Process of Deracination'
March 21, Joseph Shaw: 'Why liberation enslaves us'
April 25, Niall Gooch
May 30, Daniel Dolley
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My latest for the Catholic Herald.
Holy Communion at the LMS' High Mass in Bedford

It begins:

The recent letter of Cardinal Blaise Cupich of Chicago on the manner of receiving Holy Communion has reignited the long-standing debate over kneeling and standing.

Contrary to the impression one might receive from the at times acrimonious online debate, Cardinal Cupich’s instructions are par for the course and certainly not outlandish. The problem derives from the complex relationship between the norms agreed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and a deeper layer of liturgical law and magisterial teaching, which I summarised for Una Voce International here.

Like nearly every Bishops’ Conference around the world (that of Kazakhstan is one exception), the US Bishops long ago asked for, and received, permission from the Holy See to permit the Faithful to receive Holy Communion in the hand, instead of on the tongue. At the same time, communion rails were being torn out in churches all over the world, and instead of priests moving up and down a row of communicants kneeling at the rail, they got the Faithful to queue up while they stayed in the same place.

The two practices – kneeling vs. standing, and receiving on the tongue vs. in the hand – have become fused into a single issue: a traditional practice which emphasises reverence, and a post-Vatican II practice that is promoted in the name of an “adult” attitude, and, when conflict arises, in terms of uniformity and obedience to official directives.

Read the whole thing there.
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Some rather nice violet vestments belonging to the Latin Mass Society,
used at the Guild of St Clare Sewing Retreat last Lent.

My latest for Catholic Answers.
It begins:

On the first Sunday of Advent, in place of green, priests celebrating the Mass don vestments of violet, the color of penance, and the Gloria is not said. In this respect, Advent resembles Lent: just as we do penance as we await the liturgical celebration of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, so we do as we await his birth.

Nevertheless, Advent is a carefully calibrated penitential season. Whereas there is no gloria, there is an Alleluia.

Advent has not, historically, usually been regarded as requiring the same degree of penance as Lent. A penitential season leading up to Christmas enters the Church’s historical record in France in the year 480, with fasting three days a week from St. Martin’s Day (November 11), but as it spread to other countries, it became shorter and less severe.

Read the whole thing there.
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Mass for SS Peter & Paul in the Birmingham, also the occasion of the 
LMS AGM. Because the feast fell on a Saturday its celebration in the Novus Ordo
was moved to the Sunday. The same thing will happen in 2025 with All Saints.
My latest for Catholic Answers. It begins:

The Church’s Code of Canon Law lists ten holy days of obligation in addition to Sunday (1246.1): Christmas, Epiphany, the Ascension, Corpus Christi, January 1 (see below), the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, St. Joseph, Ss. Peter and Paul, and All Saints.

Readers may be surprised that there are so many, and some may be surprised that Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the Church’s only Fast days, are not among them. However, bishops’ conferences can ask the Holy See to “abrogate” (remove) the obligation to attend Mass on some of these, and most countries have only five or six in practice: Christmas, plus a handful of others with special importance in the country in question.

A matter of recent controversy has been the question of what happens to the obligation, when not formally abrogated, when the feast falls on a Saturday or a Monday, perhaps because it has been transferred from Sunday to the following Monday. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has long taken the view that in these cases, the obligation is or can be lifted, but the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Interpretation of Legislative texts recently clarified that this is not so: the obligation cannot so easily be evaded, and the faithful must attend Mass on both the second Sunday in Advent and the Monday to which the Immaculate Conception has been transferred. 

Read the whole thing there.
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On Monday the third annual Requiem for the Catholic Military Association, organised by the Latin Mass Society in Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, took place. It was well attended, included by current members of the armed services, and accompanied by the Southwell Consort, with a polyphonic requiem by the Portugese composer Manuel Cardoso (1566-1650).
For more on the Catholic Military Association of Our Lady of Victories, see their website.

The celebrant was the parish priest, Fr Alan Robinson. Photos by me: click through for more.
A particular treat was the Last Post, played by a military bugler in dress uniform, at the end of the Absolutions at the Catafalque. 











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The celebrant was Fr Gerard Byrne, assisted by Fr Michael Cullinane (deacon) and Fr Thomas Crean OP (subdeacon). It took place in The Holy Child and St Joseph, Bedford. Organised by the Latin Mass Society's Local Representative, Barbara Kay, Mass was a Votive of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in reparation for abortion. It was accompanied by the Southwell Consort.

Numbers have been increasing for this event, and there were just under 100 present this year.



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Last Saturday was the Commemoration of All Souls: a day when Masses are said for the dead. The Latin Mass Society has an annual Requiem Mass, and it was fitting that since All Souls fell on a Saturday, this was the day of our Requiem. The Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory very kindly celebrated their All Souls High Mass for the our intentions: that is, for the deceased members, staff, and benefactors of the Society.

Since it was a First Saturday, it was also a day on which a Traditional Mass is celebrated in Westminster Cathedral. I was able to attend both these Masses, and before the latter started, I placed the customary wreath on the tomb of Cardinal Heenan. The LMS always marks its gratitude to Cardinal Heenan in this way, as His Eminence was instrumental in getting the first permission from the Holy See for the continued celebration of the Traditional Mass.

This month's Mass took place in the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral, as its usual location, the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, is undergoing restoration work. (Hence the temporary tabernacle in the Lady Chapel). The moasics of these two chapels are particularly lovely.
A special thanks to Daisy's florists in Victoria who supplied the lovely wreath.
 
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The top of the newly-restored baldachino in St Peter's, Rome, on the occasion
of the traditionalist pilgrimage 'Ad Petri Sedem': to the See of Peter.

My latest on 1Peter5. It begins:

I am in debt to Dr John Lamont for his thorough discussion of the question of papal heresy. It is a problem that does not have a definitive explanation in magisterial texts, but as many important theologians and canonists of past centuries agree, it is one that has to be faced. Contrary to a naïve ultramontanism, it is not impossible for a pope to espouse heretical opinions, and indeed it has happened more than once in the past. The question is, what happens then?

This possibility is in itself not a challenge to the doctrine of papal infallibility. Papal infallibility has been very carefully defined at the First Vatican Council, and naturally it was defined very narrowly. The Pope’s public teaching on matters of faith and morals is guaranteed free from error (not, be it noted, inspired, like Scripture, only preserved from error) when he teaches the whole Church in the most solemn manner. Such teaching is not at issue here. A heretic is a heretic even if he never teaches anything solemnly. I might be a heretic even if I never express my heresy to another human being – although, in that case, no-one would know. The most likely case of papal heresy would be a pope harboring heretical opinions which are expressed in a private capacity, or at least in a less solemn mode of teaching, such as (on the usual historical reading) Pope John XXII teaching from the pulpit against the Particular Judgement in the 14th century.

Dr Lamont’s particular target is the much-followed view of Cajetan and John of St Thomas, that can be summarized rather simply as follows. They accept that a heretic cannot hold office in the Church, since the rejection of the Faith implies self-expulsion from the Church. (This is a theological notion of membership of the Church.) However, except in the most extreme emergencies, members of the Church should be able to rely on apparent office-holders wielding genuine authority, since this has implications for the salvation of souls. So bishops and others in the Church can continue to exercise their offices until such time as they are legally convicted of heresy: that is, denounced by their superiors, perhaps in the context of a canonical trial.
Read the whole thing there.
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