Chairman's Blog

Roger Buck, author of The Gentle Traditionalist and Cor Jesu Sacratissimum: from Secularism and the New Age to Christendom Renewed, has kindly reviewed my book The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals on his website.

For one garners insight here from not one—but many cultured, thoughtful, even brilliant men and women hailed in their fields, even sometimes hailed as geniuses.

Their brilliance is evident in the book and these profound souls were often astoundingly prophetic as to the steep price the Church would pay for sacrificing her liturgy. Indeed, as the non-Catholics here also recognised, the West itself would pay a steep price. A great irony in the book is that these were all lay people, even at times agnostic or atheist ones, but who clearly saw things the clerics could not.

What is needed in the battle for the Mass is not ‘clickbait’, Internet flames, snide memes, specious arguments from statistics or other trivialities—but precisely the profound depths Joseph Shaw reveals in this book.

I cannot recommend it enough. Turn off the Internet, read it contemplatively, listening attentively to the great minds on offer here—and see if you do not emerge with a deeper, wiser perspective as a result. And if you have friends still dithering on the fence as to this central battle of our time, buy them a copy and beg them to read it, too! It is that important.

Read the whole thing there.

More about the book here.

My article begins:

The Catholic Church’s clerical sex abuse crisis may be said to have entered public consciousness with the Boston Globe’s revelations, which began in January 2002, and it has yet to go away. The standard explanation of it is that bishops and other superiors covered up abuse in order to protect the reputation of the Church, but this is almost the opposite of the truth. The reality is that sexual abuse was covered up as part of a strategy of calculated risk-taking, not for the benefit of the institution, but for the benefit of the superior.

I spent many years in Roman Catholic institutions populated by abusers and, while never a victim myself, I got to know some of the perpetrators and some of those who protected them. My argument, however, is based on well-established patterns of behaviour which can be found beyond the confines of the Roman Church. These patterns extend back in time at least as far as the 1960s, and they continue to persist.

Easter Vigil at St Mary Moorfields in 2023

The liturgical celebrations of the Easter Triduum – spanning Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday – according to the ancient (Traditional Latin) rite will not take place in the Diocese of Westminster this year.

The changes follows the decision of Cardinal Vincent Nichols, archbishop of the diocese, and the head of Catholics in England and Wales, to discontinue the custom of featuring liturgy over the Easter weekend in the traditional form – ­something which had taken place annually since the 1990s.

Cardinal Nichols acknowledged in correspondence to Fr Michael Cullinan denying the latter’s request to host this year’s triduum at St Mary Moorfields – the only Catholic church in The Square Mile of the City of London – that he was aware the decision would cause disappointment.

“I realise that this will disappoint some people,” he revealed, “but I have to keep the wider picture in view”, in an email which has been shown to the Herald.

Read the whole thing there.