Chairman's Blog
Iota Unum talks for 2025
Holy Communion: kneeling or standing?
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| 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.
Fight the Anti-Advent
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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. |
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.
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.
Moving Holy Days of Obligation: for Catholic Answers
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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.
Armistice Day Requiem for the Catholic Military Association
Annual Mass of Reparation for Abortion in Bedford: photos
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.
All Souls: Annual Mass of Requiem for the Latin Mass 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.
On a heretical pope: reply to Dr John Lamon
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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. |
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.
More on the 'Traditionalist Ordinariate'
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| The Dominican Rite in a Dominican community: how would this relate to an 'ordinariate'? |
Readers may remember the debate between me and Fr Louis-Marie de Blignières FSVF about the concept of a 'personal ordinariate' type structure for Traditionalists, which took place in the pages of the journal of Fr de Blignieres' journal Sedes Sapientiae. I expanded on my doubts about the wisdom of this approach on OnePeterFive.
A response in turn has been made to this by Fr de Bligniere's confrere, Fr. Antoine-Marie de Araujo, in Rorate Caeli. He suggests that my criticism is based on a misunderstanding of the proposal:
First, the proposed traditional ordinariate is not intended to replace, or even encompass, the traditional institutes (FSSP, ICKSP, etc.), parishes, or communities that celebrate the ancient rite today. There is no question of establishing a structure into which all traditional Catholics should fall.
However, I am perfectly aware that the proposal is for what he calls a 'a flexible and permeable instrument, well-adapted to the diverse situation of Catholics attached to the old Latin traditions.'
Traditionalists sympathetic to the idea of an ordinariate probably don’t envisage the TLM being prohibited outside it. The danger is that an Ordinariate structure could be used to justify such a prohibition. To put it another way, if Catholics attached to the TLM come to support the idea of an Ordinariate, understanding it in a non-exclusive way, it could come to be supported, and implemented, by people in positions of authority who have a more negative conception of it. Our opponents would have a range of options about how to impose their vision. They could make exclusivity the price to be paid for the benefits of an Ordinariate; they could bury the negative implications in some small print; and they could impose them only after the Ordinariate is established.
The problem is not with the details of what Fr de Blignieres is imagining. The problem is how a proposal along these lines would actually be implemented.
The Traditional Latin Mass is the patrimony of every priest and lay person of the Latin Rite, and as such it must not be limited, in law or in practice, to members of a traditionalist Ordinariate.
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| A High Mass in the Birmingham Oratory |
A dream pilgrimage: in the Catholic Herald
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| Walking on the banks of the Great Ouse on the way to Walsingham. |
For the “On Pilgrimage With” section of the September 2024 edition of the Catholic Herald magazine, we spoke to Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society and president of Una Voce International, about his dream pilgrimage:
Where would you go?
I’ve walked from Ely to Walsingham with the Latin Mass Society since 2009, and more recently extended the route back to Cambridge, with a smaller group of pilgrims. I’ve also done the traditional Paris to Chartres pilgrimage a few times. The ultimate walking pilgrimage, though, has to be from the Pyrenees on the French border to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Whom would you take?
As many people as possible!