Chairman's Blog

For the Conclave, the Collect of the Votive Mass pro eligendo:

Supplici, Domine, humilitate deposcimus: ut sacrosantæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ concedat Pontificem illum tua immensa pietas; qui et pio in nos studio semper tibi placitus, et tuo populo pro salubri regimine sit assidue ad gloriam tui nominis reverendus. Per Christum.

We entreat Thee most humbly as suppliants, O Lord, that Thy boundless mercy may give the holy Roman Church a Bishop whose loving care in our regard will always be pleasing to Thee, and may be constantly honoured by Thy people for the glory of Thy name for his beneficent rule. Through Christ our Lord.

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'Catholic Unscripted' have a released a full session with me talking about these matters. If you don't know about the context this may or may not be of interest, but it is a response to an internet sensation, which needs a response, and a wider problem of people in the Traditional Movement being sucked into conspiracy theories and antisemitism.
Here it is.

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A beautiful Mass in Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, celebrated by Fr Alan Robinson and accompanied by the Southwell Consort, who sang Victoria's Requiem. (Cardinal Nichols had given a general permission for Requiems to be celebrated for Pope Francis during the Octave, and celebrated one himself the same day.)



 
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Venerating the Cross on Good Friday (St Mary Moorfields, London)
This month I have an article in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review. It takes it start from a 1961 Memorandum sent to the Holy See, Anti Jewish Elements in Catholic Liturgy by the American Jewish Committee, which was intended to influence the reform. 
Until the conclusion of the paper I keep the question of the validity of those concerns separate from my main question: did the reformers of the Consilium act on them?
The short answer is 'no'. I was myself surprised to discover this, but the evidence is quite clear. I encourage readers interested in the subject to read my paper which sets out why I come to that conclusion in full.
Briefly, there are three main indications that the Consilium was not guided by this document.
First and most obviously, the texts identified in the Memorandum as most problematic are still there in the reformed Missal, namely St John's Passion Narrative and the Improperia (Reproaches), both used on Good Friday.
Furthermore, second, as the Memorandum points out, texts in the vernacular are more problematic than the same texts in Latin, because people understand them more immediately. This means that the reform was not simply neutral on the question of the Jews. As far as the Memorandum's principles are concerned, it made things worse.
Third, while some texts that could be said to be problematic do disappear in the reform, other texts which are at least as bad have been given greater prominence, or have even been freshly composed for the reformed rites. This suggests that the passages that disappeared did so for other reasons.
This includes the prayer for the conversion of the Jews in the Good Friday Intercessions, which changed radically in the reform. We may say that it was softened out of a concern for Jewish sensitivities, but the same softening process was applied to the prayer for the conversion of heretics and schismatics and the prayer for pagans, in the same series. On the other hand, prayers explicitly for the conversion of the Jews continued to be composed by the Consilium, for inclusion in the Liturgy of the Hours -- where they can still be found today. As a matter of fact, the Memorandum raised no objections to the Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews as it existed in 1961.
Clearly, the Holy See did not accept the Memorandum's argument that the passages were problematic.  Nor did it accept the argument, that the Memorandum did not make, that there is a problem with praying for the conversion of the Jews. On both points, of course, I think they were right. Later, starting in the later 1970s, concerns about the Church's relationship with the Jews took on a different form, and this is when we find people objecting to various liturgical texts. These objectors can find no comfort from the liturgical reform, however.
This might all seem a bit academic, but opponents of the Traditional liturgy regularly use the argument that the reform removed elements offensive to the Jews, and so the unreformed liturgy is a problem in as much as it still contains them. This idea was wheeled out in 2007 to oppose Pope Benedict's liberation of the Traditional Mass (here), and keeps popping up: for example, in The Tablet's report on the petitions in support of the ancient Mass last year (13th July 2024). 
As I have now shown, this argument is demonstrably false.
Chanting the Passion Narrative on Good Friday.
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Booking is now open for the LMS Walking Pilgrimage to Walsingham, which takes place from Thursday 22nd August to Sunday 25th August. But before we can welcome 200+ pilgrims, we need to be able to look after them. We need volunteers! Today I am going to talk about drivers.
To volunteer, email [email protected]
From its first year the Pilgrimage has had 'support drivers', and these have been becoming more and more numerous in recent years. For this year, we are in particular need of a van driver, as we need to have two luggage vans, and not just one. We can't get a lorry down the country lanes, so we hire an 'extra long' Mercedes Sprinter, or the the equivalent.
The luggage van is just one part of the support driver team. We also have a mobile sacristy, dedicated transport for the equipment used by the cooking team, and a special vehicle for portable loos. 
We also need cars, the bigger the better, to ferry volunteers from one place to another, to allow priests who have to say a private Mass to rejoin the walkers, and to pick up pilgrims who are injured or exhausted. 
We are particularly keen to hear from drivers with experience driving vans, for the luggage vans, who have the necessary category on their driving license.
Most of our larger vehicles are hired for the occasion; other drivers bring their own, especially if they have people-carriers. Naturally, all expenses can be claimed back from the LMS.
If you would like to take part in the pilgrimage without walking, but in a way crucial to operation of the pilgrimage and indeed to the comfort and safety of walking pilgrims, please consider volunteering as a driver. Please email [email protected]


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Booking is now open for the LMS Walking Pilgrimage to Walsingham, which takes place from Thursday 21st August to Sunday 24th August. But before we can welcome 220+ pilgrims, we need to be able to look after them. We need volunteers who give up their chance to walk in order to do some quite unglamourous jobs, such as cooking and cleaning.
Each day of the walk there is breakfast and an evening meal. We don't just give pilgrims a paper cup of coffee or an empty milk carton of instant soup (happy though these memories of Chartres are!). While the size of the pilgrimage makes it possible, our cooking team continues to provide real food: bread and jam, porridge and hard boiled eggs for breakfast, and a hot meal made from basic ingredients in the evening. 
There is plenty of penance to be had in getting up early to walk 20 miles or so, but our pilgrims don't set off with an empty stomach, and the evenings are convivial. It is another element of Catholic culture which we are aiming to restore, and a reflection of our respect for the walking pilgrims.
Quisquis enim potum dederit vobis calicem aquæ in nomine meo, quia Christi estis : amen dico vobis, non perdet mercedem suam. Mark 9:41
For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.

The cooking team is led by a professionally qualified cook, and the core team has many years' experience of cooking for the pilgrims in the unique conditions of the Walsingham Pilgrimage. They need help from a wider group of people who would like to participate in the pilgrimage in this special way, not only in preparing meals, but also in preparing venues and cleaning them after the pilgrims have departed.
You do not need to be a highly-skilled cook. What you do need is patience, an even temper, a willingness to do what you are asked even if this is not very interesting, a willingness to work in a team and make yourself as useful as possible, plus commitment and stamina.
Because this is hard work. Being a volunteer in an event like this is not the easy option, and precisely for this reason all the graces of the pilgrimage are available. 
It may be impossible for you to attend some of the main Masses, but Masses are celebrated specially for the volunteers, and we hope to have a chaplain just for the volunteers: so this post is not just for lay people who want to participate in the pilgrimage without walking, but also priests who might want to do so. Not everyone can walk 56 miles: there are other things you can do to help.
If you wish to be considered for this role, email [email protected]

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Servers and Sacred Ministers at Mass for the Latin Mass Society's AGM
at Westminster Cathedral in 2021. Phot: John Aron.
My latest on One Peter Five is a double book review I wrote for the last Gregorius Magnus. It begins:

This is a reflection on two books published this year:

Catherine Pakaluk Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth (Regnery, 2024)

Paul Morland No One Left: Why the World Needs More Children (Forum, 2024)

Over the last decade or two, we have become used to the fact that we are facing a demographic winter. For some time this fact had to struggle to be heard, because of the entrenched idea that the problem was the opposite, a population explosion that would overwhelm the world’s capacity to produce food. Although this theory was dominant in the 1970s and 1980s, and lingers to this day in some circles, it was always very dubious and for a long time now has been clearly false. The rate of the growth of the world population peaked in the early 1960s. The growth rate has continued to decline since then, and as night follows day it will fall below zero in the decades to come, and the world population will begin to shrink.

These two books give important insights into the relationship between economics, demography, and values. Paul Morland is a demographer without a particular religious axe to grind: he frequently reminds his readers of his support for contraception. Catherine Pakaluk, married to the Catholic philosopher Michael Pakaluk, is a Catholic mother of eight, and also a social scientist with a background in economics, who led a research project to interview 55 women in America who had college degrees and at least five children.

Paul Morland sets out the facts of the demographic implosion the world is facing: how severe it is, how difficult to reverse it will be, and the frightening consequences that can be expected from it. These consequences are already unfolding in Japan, a rich country where old people are increasingly dying alone and untended in their homes. Japan is unusual in having resisted mass immigration as a solution to falling numbers of young people joining the workforce, but as Morland points out, the world as a whole cannot solve its demographic problem through immigration. When poorer countries arrive at the demographic stage that Japan is in today, the consequences for the care of the elderly will be ugly. Already, relatively poor nations such as Thailand and Jamaica have fertility rates well below replacement levels, and many other countries are heading in the same direction. The demographic winter will reach some countries before others, but it is not a problem only for the rich world.

Read it all there.
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Booking pages here!
Would you like to walk with 200 others 56 miles from Ely to Our Lady's Shrine in Walsingham, across Norfolk? We've got the pilgrimage for you!
Is that not enough? You can add another 18 miles at the beginning by walking with a smaller group from Cambridge -- or start the previous Sunday and walk from south London!
This is the largest walking Catholic pilgrimage in Britain, and it is powered by Gregorian Chant, good food, and the Traditional Mass. And if you book before Easter you'll get a discount!
Or come as a volunteer, and you could come for free!

We need volunteers to cook, clean, drive vehicles, marshal the pilgrims on the road, take photographs, and sing. More details in posts to follow.

Walsingham is England's ancient Marian shrine: it dates to before the Norman Conquest. Follow the footsteps of your Catholic predecessors, and offer something worthy for the conversion of England, and your private intentions. Booking pages here!

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I make an appearance in this video produced by the Catholic Herald.
It's a good short discussion of some issues around the Traditional Mass. My contribution is to object to 'Shine Jesus Shine'; I should say that, in footage not included here, I'm equally critical, and for the same reason, of some old hymns like 'God of Mercy and Compassion'. The problem, in this case, is not the liturgical reform, although (contrary to the wishes of many reformers) it encouraged the invasion of Mass by terrible hymns.

My point is about sentimental, mawkish, emptionally manipulative art and rhetoric, which seems to me to be very much what the traditional liturgy is not. The texts and chants of the liturgy have a very different character: they are astringent, honest, and wholesome; they have an emotional range, certainly, but they put the supernatural message front and centre, and decorate or interpret this. What I object to is when an emotional reaction is sought out first, with the substantive message left as an afterthought. The people doing this would say to us: what's your problem? Look, we've filled the church for you!
The problem is that if you are subjected to lots of emotionally manipulative music, images, and sermons, you will get the impression that there is no justification for this emotion: that it is emotion without substance. 
Imagine a saccharine image of the child Jesus: it is all about how sweet he looks, not about the supernatural realities. But other babies are sweet too, and images of other babies can be just as sweet. So if you anchor your devotion to the child Jesus in his looking sweet -- if that is where your religious emotion is coming from -- you can wake up one morning and think 'that's just a load of nonsense' and feel you've been taken for a fool. And at that point you won't be in a mood to let someone explain that after all there is some substance to it, which up to then no-one had bothered to convey.
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Ash Wednesday last year

My latest for Catholic Answers concerns Shrove Tuesday -- also known as Pancake Day and Fat Tuesday.

In a recent article, I discussed the penitential character of Advent and noted the difficulty of maintaining this while the world seems determined to make the season an anticipatory celebration of Christmas. A similar problem arises in the context of the beginning of Lent—and goes back much farther, historically.

Fat Tuesday Versus Lent

Lent is the Church’s major penitential season. The degree of rigor has varied over the centuries, but in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (CIC), every day of Lent (except Sundays) was a fast day, when we could eat only one full meal and two light meals. (On most of these days, eating meat was permitted.) Earlier in the history of the Church, the Faithful would abstain from not only meat during Lent, but also even eggs and butter.

Read it all there.
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I have made an appearance on the Gnostalgia podcast, with Sebastian Morello and Brian Scarffe. We talk about the liturgy and rationalism.
You can get in on your favourite podcast platform, and it is also uploaded (without images!) to YouTube, as shown below.
It was a fun discussion!


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This retreat was led by Fr John Saward, Priest in Charge of SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford. The venue was St Joseph's Pastoral Centre in Ashurst, near Southampton.


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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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