Chairman's Blog

30/01/2017 - 10:00

What, then, should we do? Part 3: what it means for you.

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Latin Mass Society Waling Pilgrimage to Walsingham.

The first post in this series is here, the second here.

In the last two posts I have given a number of reasons why the defence of the Faith and those upholding it will best be done through the movement for the restoration of the Traditional Mass. This post is about what that means in practice for you, dear reader.

First, let me summarise the reasons for what I know will be a uncomfortable conclusion for many good-hearted Catholics, some of which I have discussed at greater length in the previous posts.

1. The Traditional movement maintains good relations with faithful non-traddie priests and laity, and does not typically exclude anyone when it comes to particular projects in defence of the Faith. Non-traddie conservatives are often less open-minded.

2. The movement combines a high level of cohesion (both common purpose and common cultural reference-points), with a looseness of formal organisation which makes it very robust.

3. The Traditional Mass acts as a barrier to those not serious about the Faith: or converts them. The orthodoxy of the liturgy and of those attached to it are mutually reinforcing.

4. The movement’s historical experience has effectively innoculated it against Papolatry.

5. The movement provides the dense network of collaboration and mutual support, within a reliably orthodox community, which is needed for priests and laity who want to maintain the Faith in the current crisis.

6. The Traditional Mass both symbolises and reinforces our connection with the Church’s tradition in all its aspects, which is essential to the long-term solution to the crisis.

Finally, to bring our deliberation back to something in our power to do, contributing to the movement is something which every Catholic, and every reader of this blog, can, personally, do.

It is frustrating to see a crisis unfolding and to feel helpless. People long to be able to get involved in some useful way. The generic advice to fast and pray is good, of course, but it is natural, and a healthy instinct, to want to do something more specifically related to the issues of the day. So do! Don't just sit on the sidelines.

If you understand the role of the Traditional movement in providing moral and sometimes practical support for priests and laity upholding the Faith (5), and the essential place a sense of Catholic continuity with the past has in restoring orthodoxy (6), and further the providential characteristics which makes the movement as it currently exists less vulnterable to attack than anything comparable (2-4), then it is evident that you can do something about the crisis. Anything you do to support the Traditional movement, to make its network bigger, denser, and more effective, will be a contribution to the defence of the Faith, and the movement does so much, in so many places, that no one, anywhere, can fail to have a part to play. No one.

Fasting and praying will have greater meaning, and indeed greater value in the eyes of God, if done in conjunction with others on some kind of organised plan. Ok, so you live in an Antarctic research station with only penguins for company, you don’t like the Traditional liturgy, and you have no money at all: you can still join, online, a sodality (/confraternity / guild) associated with a traditional Institute or lay apostolate which prays in a systematic way, supported by the celebration of Masses, and towards whose intentions you can contribute your rosaries, fasts, and sufferings. The Latin Mass Society’s Sodality of St Augustine (no joining fee) is an example; there are many others. (The websites of the Traditional Institutes would be a place to look further.)

The next thing to do is to educate yourself more deeply, not primarily in the latest conspiracy theory (fun though these can be), but in the Church’s tradition of spirituality. This will bring you into contact with issues of liturgy, theology, and history, and if you don’t yet see the point of the Traditional Mass, then your questions will begin to be answered. It is not optional for Catholics to be informed about central aspects of the Faith, in accordance with their abilities and general education. Newman’s ‘well-instructed laity’ is a necessary bulwark of the Church in its human aspect. The Traditional movement provides you with endless free opportunities to do learn about the Mass and the Faith, from the FIUV Position Papers onwards. Unless you are really penniless, however, buy a few books as well.

Even if you can’t physically get to any Masses or other devotions, you can still support your local Una Voce / Latin Mass group, and one or more of the Traditional Institutes, with your prayers, membership, and financial contributions. Everything in the traditional movement is run on a shoestring, which means that donations go a long way. Everything, that is, apart from what is needed for the service of God, when quality of materials and workmanship have special importance. How wonderful, and how rare, to be able to contribute to a movement with these priorities!

If you are neither house-bound nor marooned in Antarctica, get yourself to the Traditional Mass. Numbers attending these Masses are all-important. Perhaps we shouldn’t think this way, but we, and our opponents, inevitably do: it is essential for morale, for our ability to resist attacks, and for the spread of the apostolate, that people make the effort to come to our events. Not just Sunday Masses, of course: the Traditional movement puts on all sorts of devotional events, pilgrimages, conferences, and social gatherings. If you want to do something for the Church, help your local Traditional-Mass-saying priests and groups by supporting their initiatives. Why not support your ordinary local parish? Not because that is bad, but, for all the reasons outlined above, if you want to do something specifically about the current crisis, you need to do something to support the Traditional movement.

Go along, and volunteer to help. In the Traditional movement, there is always something to do. This may sound absurd, but I spend many hours stuffing envelopes. Latin Mass Society volunteers spend many Saturdays manning stalls, or giving people tea to pilgrims. Priests in traditional Institutes find themselves renovating their homes and churches. Diocesan priests celebrating the Traditional Mass may have no one to serve their Masses. The possibilities for expanding and making more splendid and attractive the provision of the Traditional Mass are limited by a shortage of people who can sing Gregorian Chant. There are vestments to mend, cakes to bake, and children to catechise.

It may be, dear reader, that it is impossible for you to contribute in any of these more complex ways. If so, go back to the earlier items in my list. But don’t ask ‘what are we to do?’

My answer may disappoint some readers. It would be nice to think of ourselves as queuing up before St Bernard to vow to go on crusade, and then marching off to smite the infidel. But no one can imagine that the current crisis can be solved quite like that, fun though it sounds. What is needed is a cohesive and and dedicated body of the Faithful, in support of a substantial number of truly faithful priests, to make it absolutely, if quietly, clear, that the Faith will not be taken from them. That is exactly what I am offering you the chance to take part in.

And did I mention this? Booking for the Chartres Pilgrimage (British Chapter) is now open.

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29/01/2017 - 12:00

What, then, should we do? Part 2: why the Traditional Mass

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A young man being made a soldier of Christ, at the Traditional Confirmation ceremony
organised by the Latin Mass Society in London.

The first post in this series is here.

The Church is enriched by all sorts of organisations and movements, many of them doing good work. I have just argued that in response to the current crisis Catholics of good will should rally to the banner of the Traditional Mass, and the movement which supports it. Why? What is wrong with all the other organisations and movements in the Church, and indeed one’s own geographical parish?

The advantages the Traditional movement has in the current crisis are both tactical and strategic; I shall give two examples of each. Consider the tactical ones first.

The recent history of the FFI and the Order of Malta illustrate two important tactical realities. One is that the Traditional Mass is a de facto rallying point for orthodoxy on a wide range of issues. (This has been the fear of opponents of the ancient Mass from the beginning.) The other is that internal divisions, including divisions about the liturgy, provide both an excuse and a point of leverage for attacks on an organisation (/ group / parish). It follows from these two undeniable facts that the Traditional movement has an obvious advantage. It is by definition united around this banner of orthodoxy.

Yes, it is possible for people not committed to orthodoxy to like the Traditional Mass, and yes, it may be—and has been—possible to find or foment divisions in an organisation theoretically committed to the Traditional Mass. I do not claim that particular elements of the Traditional movement are invulnerable. They are simply better off, in these respects: they are more united, and they are united, furthermore, around something with a strong connection with orthodoxy.

The second tactical advantage is that the Traditional movement is not dominated by any one organisation: the blogs, priestly Institutes, lay groups, periodicals and so forth all exist among a good number of others of their kind. The suppression of one or another would not be the same kind of disaster as is the suppression of the FFI or the Order of Malta, because resources and support can be transferred between them far more easily than between non-traddie conservative organisations. Traditional groups are not interchangeable, but the fact that they support the Traditional Mass is a decisive reason for nearly everyone who supports them, to support them, and these supporters are, normally, already very familiar and friendly with other Traditional Catholic groups and organisations, and would be highly likely to find another group to support instead, were their current favourite to disappear. The orthodox Catholics who support the Order of Malta (as with other worthy conservative bodies) do so for all sorts of complex reasons, and if the Order were, for practical purposes, to disappear, they would be scattered to the four winds. As a force for good the Order would be gone, and no similar organisations would be proportionally strengthened. This is not a criticism of the Order, but in the current crisis it is a disadvantage.

As noted in the last post, this fact means that, in fact, traditional groups are to this extent less likely to be suppressed, because they present somewhat less tempting targets. In the same way, no Traditional group has amassed huge resources which could be taken away from the movement as a whole by a strike on that one group. Their resources come from their supporters, and their supporters, if necessary, would go elsewhere within the movement.

Next, for the strategic reasons.

The first strategic reason is this. As the cases of the FFI and the Order of Malta illustrate, internal struggles over teaching and liturgy are endemic within conservative Catholic organisations, and within the broadly understood ‘conservative Catholic movement’, if we want to call it that. The tactical consequence, of offering an opening to the enemy, has already been noted. The strategic consequence is that this makes them a terrible front in the war in which to invest resources, not just because of this tactical vulnerability, but because so much of one’s efforts will be spent on internal, organisational conflict.

You might say: these internal battles need to be fought. Well, that is a judgement each person needs to make on the spot. The organisation at issue may be in a great position to make a valuable contribution to the struggle if only X, Y, and Z internal battles are won by the good guys, and that may be a realistic prospect. In my experience such prospects are never as rosy as one imagines. Nevertheless, if you really judge that to be so, good luck to you, but remember this: while this battle is going on, the efforts going into the internal battle are not going into the apostolate. They are not doing the work the organisation is supposed to be doing. In the meantime, you are helping to keep an organisation afloat which may be doing bad things as well as good ones. And finally, in my experience internal battles are disproportionately exhausting and demoralising, whereas work ad extra can be very rewarding and energising.

The second strategic reason is that the connection between orthodoxy and the Traditional Mass is not accidental: it is profound. The texts and ceremonies are beautiful expressions of the Faith, emphasising our need for penance and grace, acknowledging the role of Our Lady and the Angels and Saints, reiterating the message of the Gospel (not just the nice bits), and encouraging participants into the most profound, contemplative, engagement in the prayer of the Church.

There is more to it even than this, however. As I have written before, the ancient liturgical tradition is inseparably linked to the power and prestige of the Church’s past: of the Tradition. Attacks on the teaching of the Church have to deal with the fact that this teaching (if genuine) was upheld by the Fathers, Doctors, and Popes of the past. The success or failure of these attacks ultimately depends on whether Catholics today regard the past, the Tradition, as having real force. It is for this reason that the liberal attack on the teaching of the Church in the 1960s had to be preceded by an attack on the liturgy, because the ancient liturgy is, as we might call it, an efficacious sign of our continuity with our Catholic predecessors. It both symbolises it and makes it real. You cannot for long love the Fathers and Doctors and Popes of past centuries, and hate the liturgy which they celebrated, treat with contempt the words they used in addressing God, and claim that they were trapped in a liturgical form which excluded all real participation. They stand and fall together.

In a word, if we are serious about restoring to Catholics a lively orthodoxy, a real attachment to the teaching of the Church, then giving them the impression that it was all invented by Vatican II and Pope St John Paul II is a truly terrible idea. A real attachment to the teaching of the Church has to come from a sense of continuity in the Faith handed down from the Apostles. That sense is nurtured by the Traditional Mass. Promoting the Traditional Mass is not an optional extra in restoring orthodoxy. It is the fundamental means by which alone it can be achieved.

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28/01/2017 - 18:31

What, then, should we do? Part 1: what is required.

They are coming... A procession at the St Catherine's Trust Family Retreat.

People keep asking this question; it is a fair question, and I want to try my hand at answering it. This is the first of a series of three posts on the subject.

The question refers to the current crisis in the Church. This may dissipate tomorrow by some intervention of Providence, but we must be prepared for the crisis to develop further according to its own logic. On this logic, we can expect priests and laity to come under increasing pressure to deny and to act contrary to the immemorial and irreformable teaching of the Church, the explicit teaching of Christ in the Gospels and of St Paul in the Epistles, about divorce and the sacraments.

We should not hope to escape all the bad consequences of the crisis while still giving witness to the Faith. We are called to give witness, and it is very likely that we will be called to confirm our witness with suffering. Many reading this will already have suffered greatly over this. Few, perhaps, will have escaped entirely unscathed. The question ‘what should we do?’ is not about finding a hole to hide in, but about finding a way to coordinate our work and provide mutual support and encouragement in such a way that, in human terms, this suffering will not be in vain. It is about avoiding a situation in which those who retain the Faith can be picked off one by one, quietly, and thereafter cease to be able to make any contribution to the cause. That, sadly, is what has been happening up to now.

Let us imagine what would serve us best in this crisis; it may be something we need to adapt ourselves to, but we should be prepared to make the necessary effort.

What is needed is a fairly close-knit network of both clergy and laity who are to the greatest extent possible committed to the Faith. They would be bound together not by a single, officially recognised, Catholic organisation, since such an organisation would quickly become a target and would be destroyed. Instead, just as the internet is supposed to be ‘robust’ (rugged) because it does not pass through a single, or even a few, central points, but consists of a diffuse and dense network, what we need is not a single organisation but a movement, which should nevertheless include organisations of a variety of types. Without a central organisation governing this movement, keeping entryists out of it, organising communication within it, and so forth, it would need to be bound together not only by a commitment to the Faith, but by something, which gives its members something deep and broad in common with each other, which keeps them in touch with each other, which obliges them regularly and relentlessly to work together on all sorts of projects, not only on things directly related to the crisis but a whole variety of public and private events which maintain contact and morale within the movement, which oblige its activists to maintain their presence on social media, and so on. This extra thing would act as a rallying point for supporters of the Faith, even if it is not itself absolutely essential to it.

To clarify what may seem puzzling, a mass movement to preserve orthodoxy cannot simply promote orthodoxy. Such a purpose would be too thin to bind it together. It would work for an elite group whose members can maintain personal relationships with each other. It would work for a formal organisation, which tied people together with a stable leadership, membership fees, newsletters, and regular events. It won't work for a movement which is diffuse, i.e. not centralised, and has a mass, not elite, membership. In a very vague sense there is already a 'movement to preserve orthodoxy' in the Church, but it is not remotely dense enough to provide systematic support for priests and laity who need it, and is riven with disagreement about what orthodoxy entails. What is needed for this particular job is a movement based around something which gives the notion of orthodoxy some more definite content, and at the same time gives its members something distinctive (distinctive from the heterodox, that is), in common. Something which can act as the movement's banner, or uniform.

The organisations within this movement would include officially recognised groups; however, were one of these to be destroyed, at least an important portion of its strength—in manpower, supporters, money and so on—could rapidly migrate to another, similar, organisation, or else find a role in the movement outside such an organisation. One reason for this is that all these organisations should ideally not rely on large endowments, long-established properties, or ancient privileges, but for the most part upon the generosity of their current, living supporters, as is the case for organisations which are fairly new. This would make them a less tempting target for suppression, and if the worst happened it would be much less of a disaster.

What would be best of all, were Providence to arrange such an extraordinary thing, is if, in a situation in which push really came to shove, and truly unjust measures were taken on a large scale against those upholding the teaching of the Church, those undertaking such measures would know that at least an important portion of the movement’s energies and resources would shift overnight into a well-established organisation which, though public and active all over the world, is effectively out of the reach of ecclesiastical sanctions, and is able to provide for the spiritual needs of its supporters. As I say, such a possibility seems too good to be true; what would be even more incredible is the possibility that such an organisation, while immune to sanctions, could by some paradox still be recognised officially, currently, as not being schismatic. Perhaps my imagination is running away with me here…

I think, however, that readers will have guessed by now that I am not talking about something which needs to be created, but of something which already exists. If not, then, ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you the movement for the restoration of the Traditional Mass. My last paragraph refers of course to the Society of St Pius X (SSPX). The answer to the question ‘What should we do?’ is that we should devote our energy and resources to that network best able to defend orthodoxy, to support clergy and laity who are defending orthodoxy, and to provide a spiritual home for the orthodox, and that is the Traditional movement. This means you, dear reader, playing your part in the work of priests celebrating the Traditional Mass and those, whether clerical Institutes or lay Una Voce groups, websites, journals, conferences and so on, which stand behind them and help sustain a true community dedicated to the Traditional Mass and, by the same token, to orthodoxy.

I know that many non-Traditional readers will say that what we need is a movement which includes everyone of good will, and not just those who happen to prefer a particular, rather obscure, form of the liturgy. This is mistaken, because such a broad movement would not have the characteristics required, as set out above, notably of cohesion and of the reliability of its members. I have tried to explain why above, but tomorrow I will make the case, in a slightly different way and in more detail, for saying that the Traditional movement is what we need.

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27/01/2017 - 13:55

The death of law in the Church

A general of the Vendee uprising against the French Revolution

On October 9, 1965, 450 conservative participants in the Second Vatican Council submitted written interventions for discussion, demanding the condemnation of Communism. Under the rules governing the Council, the interventions should have been debated, but they were not. At first, the excuse was made that they had not been submitted within the deadline. Then, when this proved to be untrue, Archbishop Garrone of Toulouse explained, on behalf of the Council's secretariat, that the interventions 'were not examined when they should have been, because unintentionally they had not been transmitted to the Commission members.' By then it was too late to do anything about it. So that's all right, then. (I take this summary of events from Michael Davies, Pope John's Council pp150-1.)

The recent events surrounding the Order of Malta have raised the question of the role of law in the Church, as, on the face of it, the admittedly unique and peculiar legal rights of the Order would seem to have been trampled underfoot. The problem of respect for law and legal procedure goes back further, however, as this anecdote from 1965 illustrates. Accounts of the Second Vatican Council are replete with stories of procedural shenanigans; this one was perhaps the most shameless. In the 1980s and 1990s some degree of stability was restored to the life of the Curia, perhaps, but around the world the Church's law had for many purposes simply died. Liturgical law, laws governing the training of seminarians, laws governing clerical discipline and the procedures for dealing with breaches of those laws, were only referred to, in many parts of the Church, in a purely opportunistic way to punish priests, nearly always the more conservative ones, who had annoyed their bishops or religious superiors.

Anyone during this period pointing out to priests and bishops the many laws of the Church -- whether of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, or of the Code of Canon Law -- which they routinely broke or ignored, was met with, at best, derision, and, at worst, anger and retribution. Inevitably this attitude to law carried over to issues of serious clerical wrongdoing, and also infected clerical attitudes to the law of the land, and lies behind the Church's response to clerical sex abuse cases.

The situation of lawlessness has been such that it is actually impossible for a conscientious priest or Catholic layman to keep the law even for himself. Priests who went through the liturgical rules laid out in the 2004 Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum and actually applied them in their parishes would be, in most dioceses, in deep trouble. Take the rule that Holy Communion should not be given in the hand if there was 'a risk of profanation' (section 92). Is there a priest in the developed world who would dare to apply this in the Ordinary Form?

I don't want to minimise the gravity of what is happening now, but to point out the well-laid foundations of it. Just as Traditional Catholics need to resist the temptation to think that everything before Vatican II was just fine, so conservative Catholics need to resist the temptation to think that everything before Amoris laetitia was other than catastrophically bad. Only from a catastrophically bad situation could the present hideous problems have arisen. Only after fifty years of the derision of law, and of the opportunistic, manipulative and oppressive use of law, could we have found ourselves reading about the de facto annexation of a sovereign entity by the Holy See, about priests found guilty of sexual crimes being let off if they have have friends in high places, and about a priest being suspended a divinis, by a formal decree of his bishop no less, for failing to get with the programme of Amoris laetitia: whatever that programme might be.

This last is perhaps worse than anything we have heard about in modern times: as appears from the bishop's own decree, this priest is quite literally being suspended for his adhearance to central tenets of the Catholic Faith. But it is not entirely without precedent. Remember this case? Most things like that happen more quietly.

It is no secret, of course, that theological liberalism does not have a high regard for law. Conservatives are at a disadvantage, then, in allowing themselves to be limited by the law, in dealing with liberals who do not. Liberals feel exactly the same sort of justification in breaking laws for what they see as the greater good, that Fascists and Communists did in the revolutions and conflicts of the 20th century. Their actions have the same effect, creating a situation in which only brute force can get things done, and where disciplined gangs of thugs are best positioned to weild that brute force. What conservatives want is freedom under the law: a situation in which a stable and just (if imperfect) framework of rules prevents the systematic abuse of power. That isn't the situation in the Church today, and it hasn't been for a long time.

At a certain point the remaining moral authority of deference, procedure, precedent, and rule will disappear for conservatives as it has long since disappeared for liberals. This is the moment of counter revolution: perhaps this is the moment that President Trump represents in American politics. It is dangerous because counter-revolutionaries do not always distinguish between the human laws which no longer command authority, and the Natural and Divine Laws which can never lose it. It is a phase of history for which we may need to be prepared in the Church.

Stained glass from Belmont Abbey in England.
The saint in the middle is St John Fisher. The Beatus on the right is Bl Adrian Fortescue,
who for reasons which are unclear was singled out for execution by Henry VIII: he was a knight of Malta
and an ancestor of Fra Matthew Festing. The Beatus on the left was Thomas Percy, who led an armed
uprising against Protestantism under the banner of the Five Wounds. After laying down his
weapons in a negotiated settlement, he was arrested and executed.

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24/01/2017 - 14:55

Archbishop Longley in Holy Trinity, Hethe: photos

Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham paid a pastoral visit to the parish of Holy Trinity, Hethe, last weekend, and celebrated Pontifical Low Mass on Sunday at noon. It was accompanied with motets sung by the Victoria Consort under Thomas Neal. The Archbishop was assisted by the Parish Priest, Fr Paul Lester, and Deacon Keith Crocker.

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20/01/2017 - 14:14

Diocese of Rockford: no Summorum Pontificum here

Bishop Malloy of Rockford in the USA has told his priests that, whatever Summorum Pontificum may say, they need his permission to celebrate the Traditional Mass.

Though this puts traditionally-minded priests at an advantage to those seeking to implement the Reform of the Reform: in the same letter, Bishop Malloy informs that celebration versus populum is forbidden.

Does the Pope's writ run to Illinois? The mind boggles.

I've blogged about this over on Rorate Caeli, where the letter can be seen in full.

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18/01/2017 - 17:59

Archbishop Longely is coming to Holy Trinity Hethe on Sunday

The church is close to Junction 10 of the M40, outside Bicester: OX27 8AW. Mass is at 12 noon. Lunch is provided afterwards. Pontifical Low Mass will be accompanied by some polyphonic motets.

It's going to be great: come along!

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17/01/2017 - 17:30

Vatican II on liturgical preservation

Reposted from Feb 2014. The 'good bits' (from a conservative point of view) in Vatican II on the liturgy were completely without force during the reform which followed it. As Michael Davies wrote somewhre, the only passages in official documents which are of any real importance are those which allow what was previously forbidden, or forbid what was previously allowed. That's a lesson a lot of conservatives have been slow to learn.

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

Tenebrae: Solemn Offices of Holy Week, abolished in the Ordinary Form after Vatican II

This is what the Second Vatican Council said about the Seasons of the liturgical calendar. (Sacrosantum Concilium 170)

The liturgical year is to be revised so that the traditional customs and discipline of the sacred seasons shall be preserved or restored to suit the conditions of modern times; their specific character is to be retained, so that they duly nourish the piety of the faithful who celebrate the mysteries of Christian redemption, and above all the paschal mystery.

Not only is there no mandate to abolish the Season of Septuagesima, but it is clearly ruled out. Both because all the seasons are to be 'preserved or restored', and you can't preserve or restore something by annihilating it, and because this applied a fortiori to Septuagesima since it is part of the preparation for 'the Paschal Mystery', Easter, to which this passage (rightly) accords a special importance.

If you accept Vatican II, you'd better get over to Mass celebrated in the Extraordinary Form during this season. Because in the Ordinary Form it does not exist.

But we can say the same about a number of things. Take Latin. Here is Sacrosanctum Concilium again, section 36.

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

You can't 'preserve' a thing by abolishing it. If you want to be faithful to the Council, you'd better attend a Mass in Latin. That will, sadly, be almost impossible in the Ordinary Form, so it had better be the Extraordinary Form.

Isn't this word 'preserve' interesting? Talking of rites in general, Sacrosanctum Concilium declares (para 4)

Lastly, in faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way.

Following the Council, the Dominican Order effectively forbade the Domincan Rite, a situation which only changed with Summorum Pontificum in 2007. Forbidding something, however, is not a way of preserving and fostering.

The Dominican Rite: effectively suppressed after the Council

Of course the Council did mandate a liturgical reform. It says (50)

For this purpose the rites are to be simplified, due care being taken to preserve their substance;

Again, it is impossible to preserve the substance of a rite by abolishing it. But that is what happened to the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel. The ancient Offertory Prayers were also removed, to be replaced with new ones with a markedly different 'substance'. They were not 'preserved'.

Again:

114. The treasure of sacred music is to be preserved and fostered with great care.

Now music continued to exist after the Reform, but the process cannot be described as one of preservation. What existed before - Gregorian Chant and Sacred Polyphony - was destroyed, with so few exceptions that, at its low ebb, they could be counted on the fingers of one hand, as far as the Ordinary Form is concerned.

Chant and Polyphony: for practical purposes they ceased to exist in the Ordinary Form

How about sacred art? Para 123:

Thus, in the course of the centuries, she has brought into being a treasury of art which must be very carefully preserved.

Again, 129:

In consequence they [clerics] will be able to appreciate and preserve the Church's venerable monuments, and be in a position to aid, by good advice, artists who are engaged in producing works of art.

To labour the point, art and monuments cannot be preserved by being destroyed. If it means anything, this clause means that what happened to St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, and to a million other churches around the world was wrong.

What are those who defend the liturgical reform to say about these passages? They can point out that Sacrosanctum Concilium is not infallible, since the only things in a General Council which are infallible are the anathemas (lists of condemned propositions which are found in every other General Council in the history of the Church, but which the Fathers of Vatican II eschewed).

They can point out that the practical decisions made in the course of a liturgical reform are prudential, and the guidelines given by the Council are generally prudential, and that applying them is prudential: in short, it is impossible to draw a simple line from doctrine to what actually happened in the reform.

They can point out that, as far as the law of the Church is concerned, the Pope has the authority to promulgate new rites, and the Council was actually not strictly necessary.

Defenders of the reform very seldom make these points, however: they prefer to ignore the problem. It is left to me to defend Pope Paul VI from the charge of heresy implicitly levelled against him by a liberal who thinks that deviations from Vatican II are incompatible with the Faith (or thinks that 'conservative' Catholics should think so).

The reason is simple: they don't want to shatter the illusion that those attached to the Traditional Mass are being wickedly disloyal to Vatican II, and have placed themselves irretrievably in the wrong. But if Traditionalists have done this, the reformers of the liturgy, and their supporters, have done it with knobs on.

Ruins of the Priory at Walsingham, visited by LMS pilgrims. From the point of view of
'preserving' sacred art, many Catholic churches haven't done much better since the Council.

16/01/2017 - 12:22

Malta sinks

'Weep not for me, but for yourselves
and for your children.'

In World War II, Malta was described as the 'unsinkable aircraft carrier'. Well, it has sunk now. The Bishops of Malta (both of them) have stated that anyone in an irregular union who feels 'at peace with God' should not be excluded from Holy Communion or from Sacramental Absolution: at least, that's what they seem to say. Readers can judge for themselves.

If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it” (AL 300), a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351).

Again:

there are complex situations where the choice of living “as brothers and sisters” becomes humanly impossible and give rise to greater harm (see AL, note 329).

I wonder what would happen of a priest decided that an adulterer had not undertaken a process of discernment with the requisite humility? If he'd had humility, but not 'love for the Church'? Or maybe that his 'search for God's will' was not, as required, 'sincere'? Would Archbishop Scicluna congratulate such a priest for his pastoral sensitivity?

If such a scene appears implausible, then we must admit that what the bishops are saying is simply: give absolution and Holy Communion to anyone who asks. Will we have a new Rite of Confession which makes the Act of Contrition optional? Or maybe a new Act of Contrition that leaves out the Contrition? It might look like this:

'O my God, because thou art so good, I am not at all sorry that I have offended thee, and with the help of thy grace I will offend thee again and again.'

To which the priest will respond:

'Go in peace, even though God has not put away your sins.'

Because, remember, this is not about people ignorant of the law, or about people whose actions are no longer moral actions at all because of an intolerable pressure which has destroyed their agency - not at all! - these are well-informed Catholics capable of sincere 'discernment' who are in happy second civil marriages which are sustaining loving homes for the children of these unions.

The only thing worse than the content of this document is the fact that it was published in the Vatican's official newspaper, L' Osservatore Romano.

The people telling the Four Cardinals that their dubia have already been answered now have another document to point to. But of course this is not an act of the Papal Magisterium, and in any case what we need to hear is how we are supposed to square this with things like the Council of Trent's infallible teaching that it is not impossible to obey God's law when in a state of grace. Austen Ivereigh and the others need to tell us, and the wretched clergy of Malta, why respect for the Magisterium places an ambiguous footnote in an Apostolic Exhortation, as interpreted by a couple of bishops, over a solemn anathema of a General Council.

The Magisterium of nods and winks is becoming more emphatic, and the crisis deepens, with more and more bishops, priests, and laity being thrown into the position of either going with the flow and participating in sacrilege, or resisting and becoming the target of not only the heavies in Rome but many of their own colleagues, superiors, and inferiors.

But to cheer us up, there is a very interesting and helpful interview with Cardinal Caffara to read, and canonist Edward Peters brilliantly summarises the fundamental confusions and incoherences of the Maltese statement. The Catholic Herald report on the Maltese document, by Dan Hitchens, says everything I would want it to say.

This crisis is truly separating the men from the boys in the Church. We can either side with Christ, and his difficult, demanding, but also beautiful words on marriage and divorce, or side with the Pharisees and their modern-day successors, who search out specious casuistical exceptions to the rule until the rule is no more: who nullify God's will by the traditions of men.

Once you start noticing how people sometimes accuse their opponents of the specific faults which they fear they have themselves, you start seeing it everywhere...

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15/01/2017 - 10:00

Photos of High Mass in Blackfriars

Rehearsal.

Yesterday the Oxford Dominicans celebrated a High Mass in their own, proper, rite, the ancient Dominican Rite, in honour of St Hilary of Poitiers.

The Dominican Rite is different in a number of ways from from the Roman Rite, even though they share the same basic structure and most texts. The faithful will see the clergy doing things when in the Roman Rite they'd be waiting for singing to finish, between the Epistle and Gospel.

The Dominican Rite has its own chant book - Graduale - with chants mostly very clearly related to ones in the Roman Graduale, but with a number of differences both of text, melody, and style. It is very interesting to sing it, but it can be tricky for singers used to Roman chant. The Schola Abelis, who accompanied this Mass, did pretty well, under our excellent cantor Daniel Tate.

The Dominicans also have certain gestures of their own, their own way of handling the thurible, and no doubt all sorts of things I've not noticed.

It is wonderful to see this as High Mass, which is the normative form of any ancient liturgy, where the ceremonies are found in full.

The celebrant was Fr Matthew Jarvis, OP, with Fr Richard Conrad OP as Deacon, and Br Joseph Bailham, OP subdeacon. All are members of the Oxford community.

Fr Richard Conrad preached a very interesting sermon on St Hilary. There was a good congregation, despite limited publicity, with more than fifty people in attendance.

The Latin Mass Society promotes all legitimate ancient rites, and the Dominican Order neither reformed or suppressed their Rite, but simply decided to stop using it when the OF was promulgated. Today all Dominican priests have the right to celebrate it. (There exists a reformed version of the Carthusian Rite and, amazingly, of the Rite of Braga, but as I understand it the Carmelites and the Premonstrensians followed the example of the Dominicans and simply adopted the reformed Roman rite. So much for Vatican II's emphasis on variety.)

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What, then, should we do? Part 3: what it means for you.

What, then, should we do? Part 2: why the Traditional Mass

What, then, should we do? Part 1: what is required.

The death of law in the Church

Archbishop Longley in Holy Trinity, Hethe: photos

Diocese of Rockford: no Summorum Pontificum here

Archbishop Longely is coming to Holy Trinity Hethe on Sunday

Vatican II on liturgical preservation

Malta sinks

Photos of High Mass in Blackfriars

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Chairman's Blog

What, then, should we do? Part 3: what it means for you.

What, then, should we do? Part 2: why the Traditional Mass

What, then, should we do? Part 1: what is required.

The death of law in the Church

Archbishop Longley in Holy Trinity, Hethe: photos

Diocese of Rockford: no Summorum Pontificum here

Archbishop Longely is coming to Holy Trinity Hethe on Sunday

Vatican II on liturgical preservation

Malta sinks

Photos of High Mass in Blackfriars

Menu

Shop

Resources

About Us