Chairman's Blog

22/01/2022 - 10:00

Are Traditional Catholics 'corrupt'? A response to Austen Ivereigh

Mass of Reparation, celebrated in response to clerical abuse revelations in 2018.

Austen Ivereigh writes that he has been troubled by a criticism of the restrictions on the Traditional Mass brought in last July by Pope Francis' Traditionis Custodes. This is the point, made even by people with no particular interest in the ancient Mass, that it was an example of collective punishment: the innocent were being deprived of the Mass alongside those, whoever they are, who are truly guilty, of whatever it is they are supposed to be guilty of. Even if we accept Pope Francis' characterisation of Bad Trads, it can't be true of everyone who has derived solace from the old Mass. It can't, in fact, even be true of most, because it implies a degree of theological engagement which is unusual. Most Catholics don't spend their time talking about Vatican II's teaching on Religious Liberty, for example, because most Catholics, whether they have encountered the old Mass or not, don't have a very clear idea of what it is -- the idea is absurd.

Ivereigh even takes a moment to consider those simple faithful who really aren't involved in these disputes: people who appreciate the ancient Mass because they find it predictable, orderly, and calming, like the neuro-diverse: people with Aspergers and the like. Austen's comment: they are 'oddballs'. They are beneath his consideration.

Furthermore, we have been told over and over again that Pope Francis is all about 'dialogue', 'meeting people where they are', not expecting people to be perfect, seeing the Church as a 'field hospital', not 'throwing stones' and all the rest of it. His treatment of Catholics attached to the Old Mass seems, to put it mildly, in tension with this

Ivereigh quotes Greg Hillis: “At a time when we as a church are embarking on a synodal path,” Hillis wrote, “I have difficulty understanding why a more synodal—a more dialogical—approach is not being taken with traditionalists.”
This 'nagged' at Ivereigh, he tells us. But he has come up with a solution. He has dug up something written by the Pope back in 1991, which distinguished 'sin' from 'corruption':

Hence, writes Bergoglio, “we could say that while sin is forgiven, corruption cannot be forgiven,” for at the root of corruption is a refusal of God’s forgiveness. The corrupted person or organization sees no need of repentance, and their sense of self-sufficiency gradually comes to be regarded as natural and normal.

This is the use of words not with the usual meanings, but let's go with that. The first problem is that it is no clearer than before that all, or a majority, or even an important minority of Catholics who attend Mass regularly or occasionally in the Old Rite should be categorised in this way. It is still an unjust collective punishment. Ivereigh deals with this, however, by saying that the rest of us are guilty by association because we have not attacked the guilty ones.

I think I know what Pope Francis, and indeed everyone else, would think of a Traditional movement filled with people denouncing each other. Readers may think there is too much of that already. Not enough for Austin: certainly quite enough for me.

What, though, is this accusation? In Ivereigh's way of talking, it would seem that the unrepentant sinner is 'corrupt'. You mean, like the unrepentant adulterers invited by various bishops, apparently with the encouragement of Pope Francis, to receive Holy Communion?

No, no! An exception must be made for them.

Conversely, the sinner—even when not ready to repent—knows that he is a sinner and yearns to throw himself on God’s mercy. This is the key distinction: the sinner remains, however obscurely and unconsciously, open to grace, while the corrupt deny that they sin. Enclosed by their pride, they shut out the possibility of grace.

Ok, so the corrupt deny that they sin. Would that be like the unrepentant adulterers who have been through a process of 'discernment' and decided that, really, they are in a state of grace despite their adultery, and so can fruitfully receive Holy Communion?

No, no! That's not what Ivereigh means. The process of discernment reveals that they are sinners, not ready to repent, not in a state of grace, and still ready to receive Holy Communion fruitfully, because, because, well because of something or other.

Let's look at the other side of the distinction. The adulterer is quite different from those wicked traditional Catholics. They are 'enclosed in their pride', not aware of their need for repentance. But this isn't quite right either: Austen has been trawling the Latin Mass Society website and old copies of Mass of Ages and found what I think is me saying “God is calling us to atone for our sins.” Indeed He is. 'Yet' (he comments) 'one searches their site in vain for any recognition of what those sins might be.' Er, well, naturally, Austen. How do I know what the sins of Mass of Ages readers might be? Particularly when the regulars are joined by random journalists like Dr Ivereigh. Would he hope to be included in the generalisation?

But this point seems to be the key difference between the unrepentant adulterer (good) and the Catholic who wants to attend the Traditional Mass in communion with his bishop and the Pope (bad). The adulterer refuses to repent; the latter, if we must generalise, likes to go to regular confession. Despite this, the latter is unforgivable and can't be dialogued with, because they aren't repenting of what Austen thinks they ought to be repenting of, something clearly far worse than adultery.

He quotes the Statement of the Religious Superiors:

“We are ready to convert if party spirit or pride has polluted our hearts.” Why if and may? Isn’t “party spirit and pride” one thing traditionalism has become famous for?

This looks very much like assuming what you set out to prove. Ivereigh thinks they are filled with pride. They say: we are open to considering that. How about a bit of dialogue so that we can clarify this? Austen says, no! Your failure to repent of what I criticise you for in advance of any dialogue, discernment, accompaniment, or sacrilegious Holy Communions, means that you are damned out of your own mouths.

By showing that we are ready to repent, we Traditional Catholics are condemning ourselves as people who have failed to repent. Whereas the adulterer, who is not ready to repent, is vindicated as something who wants, deep down, obscurely, in some way not manifested in his words or actions, to throw himself on the mercy of God, at some future date yet to be determined. Is that it?

Or perhaps this is the idea. The Traditional Catholics have committed a sin, according to Ivereigh, which they don't think is a sin: it is a point of controversy. And that is unforgivable because they will never repent of it until they understand that it is a sin.

But if so this is an objective but not subjective sin. It is like the sin of someone born into a schismatic ecclesial group, a Lutheran, say, who can't be blamed for being a Lutheran unless and until he realises that Lutheranism is wrong and he ought to become a Catholic: at which point of course he is likely to become one. Pope Francis is not noted for being hard on Lutherans.

But he is hard on Catholics who simply wish to attend the Traditional Mass. They, it seems, have committed the wrong kind of sin: the sin Austen Ivereigh doesn't like. That is what this great distinction comes down to. All sins can be forgiven, but not the sin Dr Ivereigh particularly doesn't like, even if it was committed unconsciously.

Ivereigh is indeed the Savoranola of our time. Repent! he cries. You don't know what your sins are, and I am not going to help you discover them. But since you have not already repented, you are damned. All can be forgiven, but not the unfashionable sin, the sin disliked by those currently in power.

You'd best be careful, Dr Ivereigh, of the day the wind changes direction.

Rosary Crusade of Reparation in London.

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21/01/2022 - 11:35

Iota Unum 2022 Season

The talks are in the basement of Our Lady of the Assumption, Warwick Street. Doors open at 6:30pm for the talk at 7pm.

Refreshments provided. £5 on the door.

Prof Tom Pink

Please come to the Golden Square entrance directly to the basement: 24 Golden Square, W1F 9JR, near Piccadilly Tube Station (click for a map)

Friday January 28th, Prof. Thomas Pink: ‘Papal Monarchy’

Thomas Pink is a Professor in Philosophy at King's College London and a Patron of the Latin Mass Society. He has a particular interest in the history of theology in the early modern and modern periods, on religious liberty and the role of the Papacy.

Theo Howard

Friday February 25th, Theo Howard: ‘The Dominicans and the English Parliament’

Theo Howard is a contributing editor of the traditionalist web journal OnePeterFive. His writing has also appeared in Crisis, the Catholic Herald and The European Conservative.

Friday March 25th, Pierpaolo Finaldi ‘On the vocation of the Catholic author’

Pierpaolo Finaldi

Pierpaolo Finaldi is the CEO and Publisher of The Catholic Truth Society, Master of the Catholic Writers' Guild, a regular guest on EWTN global Catholic TV, a Catholic Herald top 100 trailblazer Catholic, a husband and father of seven.

Friday April 29th, David Hunt ‘The perennial sin of Usury’

David Hunt

David Hunt studied at the International Theological Institute in Austria to study philosophy and theology, and recently completed an MA in Philosophy at the University of Buckingham with a thesis titled ‘Usury Redux: A defence of the scholastic position on usury’. David lives in Kent with his wife and five children.

Friday May 27th, Dr Jeremy Pilch ‘St John Henry Newman and Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces’

Jeremy Pilch

Following undergraduate studies at Oriel College, Oxford, and an MA at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (UCL), Dr Jeremy Pilch was awarded a scholarship for a doctorate at the University of Bristol, researching on the doctrine of deification in the Russian tradition, focusing especially on the thought of Vladimir Solov’ev. At St Mary’s University, Dr Pilch is the Programme Director for the BA In Theology, Religion, and Ethics. He regularly teaches across a range of topics, including modules on Systematic Theology, Mariology, Mystical Theology, Theological Anthropology, Christian Ethics, Ecclesiology, and Eastern Christianity.

Tim Stanley

Friday June 17th, Dr Timothy Stanley ‘Whatever Happened to Tradition?”
Dr Stanley is a well-known historian and journalist, and author of the recent Whatever Happened to Tradition?

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20/01/2022 - 12:05

The attack on Latin: Tito Casini

The celebrant blesses the deacon before the latter proclaims the Gospel at High Mass.
LMS Annual Mass for our Annual General Meeting in Westminster Cathedral, 2021

My latest on 1Peter5

I have been reading the Traditionalist classic, Tito Cassini’s The Torn Tunic, first published (in Italian, La Tunica Stracciata) in 1967, reprinted by Angelico Press. It is an impassioned, indeed ferocious, statement of the case for liturgical traditionalism, written and published before the Novus Ordo Missae was promulgated. Casini, like most Catholics of the time, has only the vaguest idea what further changes were being cooked up. What he was objecting to was the things which had already been done, notably by the 1964 Instruction Inter Oecumenici, and the liturgical abuses which had been springing up. Casini’s focus, like that of the Latin Mass Societies and Una Voce groups which were founded as early as 1964, was the use of the Latin language.

Read the whole thing there.

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17/01/2022 - 09:43

Iota Unum talks: Prof Tom Pink on Papal Monarchy, Friday 28th Jan

We are delighted to announce a new series of Iota Unum talks. The following have been confirmed. Great speakers, great topics, plenty of wine, an intimate setting and lots of time for discussion: if you in reach of London, don't miss out!

January Friday 28th: Thomas Pink: ‘Papal Monarchy’

February Friday 25th: Theo Howard: ‘The Dominicans and the English Parliament’

March Friday 25th: Pierpaolo Finaldi ‘On the vocation of the Catholic author’

April Friday 29th: David Hunt‘The perennial sin of Usury’

May Friday 27th: Dr Jeremy Pilch ‘St John Henry Newman and Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces’

June Fri 17th: Dr Timothy Stanley ‘Whatever Happened to Tradition?”

Doors open 6:30pm; talk at 7pm

Basement of Our Lady of the Assumption & St Gregory, Warwick Street: enter via

24 Golden Square, London W1F 9JR (click for a map)

Refreshments provided; £5 on the door.

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11/01/2022 - 09:47

The Direction of Worship, for Catholic Answers

LMS Pilgrimage to Chideock. Photo by John Aron.

My latest on Catholic Answers.

It begins:

The subject of which direction the priest should stand while celebrating Mass has generated a great deal of attention since about the middle of the twentieth century. The celebration of Mass “facing the people” (versus populum) was officially encouraged after Vatican II, but the historic practice, of “facing East” (ad orientem), is still permitted in the reformed Mass and normative for the traditional Latin Mass.

Even before the Second Vatican Council, some important historic churches, notably St. Peter’s in Rome, had altars at which celebration facing the people was possible. In St. Peter’s (and also in the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem), this was because the high altar was over an important holy place, which needed to be accessible from the nave of the church, via steps. The solution to the design problem was to allow the priest to celebrate facing east, toward the rising sun, from the apse side of the altar. This general arrangement was imitated (or anticipated) in some other ancient churches.

Read the whole thing there.

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10/01/2022 - 10:00

The idealised past and anti-Tradition: the Brown Windsor Myth

King Alfred the Great lets the cakes burn.

A key feature of tradition is the notion of a past as in some sense normative: the past as a guide to action in present, because that past should in some sense be restored. Tim Stanley talks about this in his Whatever Happened to Tradition?

As Stanley says, this is not nostalgia in the simple, and often pejorative sense. Critics of appeals to the past often say: but look that past you like was also characterised by Bad Things! Stanley responds by pointing out the obvious: if we agree they are bad, then obviously they are not among the aspects of the past we want to restore. We want to 'restore', if that is the right word, an idealised past. In fact, the creation and development of a shared sense of an ideal past is essential to a society's sense of what it should be like now and in the future. Idealising the past is a way of imagining the future. It is a way of developing a political programme.

Care is needed, of course. If the past you want to revive was dependent on slavery, for example (say, the past of classical paganism), you may say you don't want to revive slavery, and you may be sincere, but you'll have to explain how a culture built on cheap labour can be revived without the cheap labour. This is a genuine question, and there may be an answer to it, but it is a question which needs to be asked, and to ask these questions we need a discipline of history which is not just the curation of national myths. But we do also need the national myths.

Those who set out to debunk our national or indeed ecclesial myths, often on the basis of a very partial historical analysis, often do so because they, like those attached to the myths, are not primarily concerned with the past as the subject of scientific study, but with the past as a guide to the present. The people who try to debunk the idea that Britons were stoical in the face of the Blitz, for example, are not motivated by a love of truth. They are motivated by a hatred of the value of stoicism, as embedded in British self-understanding.

Those who want to cut us off from the past as a source of inspiration want, in fact, to create a lot of myths themselves. This can be done in deadly earnest, and it can be done in a jocular way. It is in the latter category, apparently, that the culinary counter-ideal, the anti-hero of the kitchen, Brown Windsor Soup, comes from. After extensive research, the people at the website Foods of England have concluded that it never, or almost never, existed. It was above all a product of satirists, popularised in the 1950s by the Goon Show.

More seriously, the Protestants who wanted to detach the English from their Catholic roots invented black legends about the Catholic past, some of which became so embedded in national consciousness that they have have taken historians generations to to unpick. Something similar has happened with the debate about the Church: was everything Bad in the Bad Old Days? Some people in the Church are determined to say so, and to hell with the facts.

What we need to do is to imagine how the Church could be, practically, using the past as a guide, with an awareness of the problems. What was good should be restored. What was bad, guarded against. What we fondly imagine to have been the Good Old Days is not a delusion: it is an imaginative attempt to see how things could be in the future.

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08/01/2022 - 15:07

Online Latin Courses: discounts for Clergy & Seminarians

The new year will see a new set of online Latin Courses from Matthew Spencer. The Latin Mass Society is happy to sponsor clergy (priests and deacons) and seminarians (or those preparing for the diaconate) to tune of 80% of the course fees.

Yes, we are serious about promoting Latin! It is not only the key to the celebration of the ancient Latin Mass: this language is, within the Latin Church, an abundant well-spring of Christian civilisation and a very rich treasure-trove of devotion (Paul VI).

We have even arranged a way for your grasp of Latin to be certified by a senior academic Latinist at a British university: if you need to show anyone you have it.

Details here.

Letter of the week: from The Tablet

The absolution before Communion: High Mass of Requiem at St Benet's Hall
(Fr Edward van den Burgh)

This is something worthy of a slightly wider audience, I think: from The Tablet's Christmas double issue (18th December).

The same issue has an article by the radio journalist Madeleine Bunting, who is creating a programme for Radio 3 on ritual. Coincidentally she refers to the a very interesting book by Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals, which I am currently reading.

The Protestant and Enlightenment theory about ritual has caused a terrible devastation of Western culture, to whit (as Bunting quotes the Catholic anthropologist Mary Douglas) "ritual has become a bad word signifying empty conformity." This theory, though still guiding many institutions and people, has now pretty well run out of intellectual steam. The interesting people are now rejecting it as old hat, and looking at what ritual did for the societies which had or still have it, and why those which lack it are missing out on something of great importance.

This is not the moment, obviously, for the final dissolution of the Church's ancient liturgical tradition. This effort is coming from people whose ideas are at least half a century out of date. (Mary Douglas was writing in the 1960s.)

-----------------------

Even as a supporter of the liturgical reform, I would have to admit that the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy is left-brained. Article 34 is a classic example: “The rites should be … short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions.”

The academic study of ritual was only starting in the 1960s. It has taken over 50 years for leading thinkers like Iain McGilchrist (“The singing of things”, 4 December) to suggest how and why we have largely lost something near-indefinable from the pre-Vatican II liturgy – when it was celebrated well at a High Mass or Missa cantata. In his chapter on “The Sense of the Sacred”, he talks of “a deep gravitational pull towards something ineffable”.

Ritual, like all art, is used when its object cannot be defined in words – or in rubrics, or in Vatican documents. Liturgy is an instrument of worship by those who take part in it – a means, not the end itself. Worship is indefinable because its object, God, is ineffable – literally “beyond speech” – thus its exercise is right-brained, rather than left-brained. That is why art, especially music, can assist worship so effectively when it illumines the ritual being performed. One cannot understand the worship signified by ritual, but one can discern it, intuit it, even be grasped by its mover, the Holy Spirit.

JOHN AINSLIE

LONDON N20

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27/12/2021 - 10:00

Responsa ad dubia: good news on private Masses

A private Mass in a side-chapel, at Prior Park, England, at our Priest Training Conference in 2016

As noted in the Latin Mass Society's canonical notes, there are a couple of points in the Congregation for Divine Worship's Responsa ad dubia on which there is good news. In both cases they are indicated by silence.

First, the Responsa are silent about the celebration of the Traditional rites during the Easter Triduum, which the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, Cardinal De Donatis, tried to prohibit in Rome. It was, indeed, an extraordinary thing for him to do, without a sliver of justification in the text of Traditionis Custodes, and it provoked a great deal of comment. The CDW obviously knew about the issue, and chose not to comment on it. Given the detail of the limitations on celebrations of the ancient Mass which it does include, this is a clear indication that they do not want to extend this arbitrary prohibition to whole world, which is to say that they do not think it is a reasonable interpretation of Traditionis Custodes.

Secondly, the Responsa are silent about the private celebration of the Traditional Mass. For reasons which elude me many bishops, including the bishops of England and Wales, have tried to insist that their permission is needed for a priest to celebrate even a private Traditional Mass. (An example is Archbishop McMahon's decree for his diocese, Liverpool.)

There seems absolutely no basis in the text of TC to support this requirement, and the LMS Guidance on TC said so (before, I should add, the bishops started to issue their decrees and ad clerums on the subject). This guidance was then sent to Archbishop Roche, the Prefect of the CDW, by Cardinal Nichols of Westminster, as noted in a letter which subsequently became public. Archbishop Roche's reply indicates that he read them: he describes them as a 'lose interpretation' (he must mean 'loose', but no matter). You can see their exchange of letters here.

Which is to say, there can be no doubt that the Congregation was aware of the issue, and aware that there were different views about it. The Congregation has nevertheless chosen not to comment on the issue, or to correct the LMS' 'lose interpretation' in this regard. Again, in the context of the, sometimes problematic, extra restrictions being placed on celebrations in the Responsa, it seems that they have decided to let this one go.

Is it reasonable to take permission for something from the Congregation's mere silence about it? Yes of course it is. One does not start with the assumption that things are forbidden, and then seek permissions. Is the Church some kind of concentration camp? No: things are permitted until they are forbidden. It is because they were not forbidden in TC, that we have been assuming that they were not forbidden up to now. The continued silence of the CDW confirms that there has been no attempt to forbid them.

This is in fact a principle of Canon law, set out in Canon 18:

Laws which establish a penalty, restrict the free exercise of rights, or contain an exception from the law are subject to strict [i.e. narrow] interpretation.

The universal permission for priests of the Latin Rite to celebrate the Old Mass 'privately' is of considerable significance. It means that it will be possible and practical for priests who have not yet been given permission to celebrate it in public to learn the Mass and to practice celebrating it in private, as in fact usually happens when a priest wants to start celebrating it. Can members of the faithful attend such celebrations? Not only can they, but it is highly recommended.

Pope Benedict in Sacramentum Caritatis (2007) 80 wrote: 'I join the Synod Fathers in recommending "the daily celebration of Mass, even when the faithful are not present." '

This needs to be read with Canon 906: "Except for a just and reasonable cause, a priest is not to celebrate the eucharistic sacrifice without the participation of at least some member of the faithful."

Thus, Masses which are literally sine populo, without any faithful, are better than not celebrating Mass at all: the value of the Mass and the priest's personal spiritual benefit is sufficient justification for celebrating alone. Nevertheless, Masses which are 'private' in the normal sense, of not being advertised and perhaps not being regularly scheduled, should if possible have at least a server; anyone who wishes to attend can of course do so: it is good to go to Mass, not bad! And if they are present, they may receive Holy Communion (see Canons 912 and 918).

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24/12/2021 - 18:00

A happy Christmas to all my readers!

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Are Traditional Catholics 'corrupt'? A response to Austen Ivereigh

Iota Unum 2022 Season

The attack on Latin: Tito Casini

Iota Unum talks: Prof Tom Pink on Papal Monarchy, Friday 28th Jan

The Direction of Worship, for Catholic Answers

The idealised past and anti-Tradition: the Brown Windsor Myth

Online Latin Courses: discounts for Clergy & Seminarians

Letter of the week: from The Tablet

Responsa ad dubia: good news on private Masses

A happy Christmas to all my readers!

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Chairman's Blog

Are Traditional Catholics 'corrupt'? A response to Austen Ivereigh

Iota Unum 2022 Season

The attack on Latin: Tito Casini

Iota Unum talks: Prof Tom Pink on Papal Monarchy, Friday 28th Jan

The Direction of Worship, for Catholic Answers

The idealised past and anti-Tradition: the Brown Windsor Myth

Online Latin Courses: discounts for Clergy & Seminarians

Letter of the week: from The Tablet

Responsa ad dubia: good news on private Masses

A happy Christmas to all my readers!

Menu

Shop

Resources

About Us