Latin Mass Society

Chairman's Blog

02/09/2024 - 10:47

Iota Unum talks this autumn

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The next season of Iota Unum talks is confirmed:
Friday Sept 27, Joseph Shaw: The family and Catholic culture
Friday Oct 25, Calum Miller: title tbc
Friday Nov 29: Prof Tom Pink 'Conscience and the Law'

Talks take place in the basement of Our Lady of the Assumption; please enter by the back entrance into the basement: 24 Golden Square, W1F 9JR near Piccadilly Tube Station (click for a map).

Doors open at 6:30pm; the talk will start at 7pm.

There is a charge of £5 on the door to cover refreshments and other expenses.

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07/08/2024 - 10:00

Evelyn Waugh on the liturgical reform: on this day, 1964

The liturgical reform ushered in by the Second Vatican Council was not a matter of replacing the 1962 Missale Romanum with the 1969 edition. Between the two there was a veritable blizzard of documents and liturgical changes, starting with Vatican II's own Sacrosanctum Concilium in 1962 and the Instruction Inter Oecumenici. The concrete changes began with the latter, which was promulgated 26th September 1964, but plenty of experiments and abuses were taking place in the meantime.

This period saw an intense debate about the liturgy in the Catholic press, and on this very day 60 years ago, a letter by the Catholic convert novelist Evelyn Waugh was published by the Catholic Herald. This letter is often quoted, but as a matter of historical interest I am publishing it in full on its anniversary.

Catholic Herald, 7th August 1964

Questions for the 'Progressives'

SIR.— Like all editors you justly claim that you are
not responsible for the opinions of your correspondents and claim credit for
establishing an open "forum".

On the other hand you write of "exploding
renewal" and "manifest dynamism of the Holy Spirit", thus
seeming to sympathise with the Northern innovators who wish to change the
outward aspect of the Church.

I think you injure your cause when week by week you
publish (to me) fatuous and outrageous proposals by irresponsible people.

Father John Sheerin is neither fatuous nor outrageous
but find him a little smug. If I read him correctly he is pleading for
magnanimity towards defeated opponents.

The old (and young) buffers should not be reprobated.
They have been imperfectly "instructed". The "progressive"
should ask the "conservative with consummate courtesy" to re-examine
his position.

I cannot claim consummate courtesy but may I, with
round politeness, suggest that the progressives should re-examine their own?
Were they perfectly instructed? Did they find the discipline of their
seminaries rather irksome? Did they think they were wasting time on the Latin
which they found uncongenial?

Do they want to marry and beget other little
progressives? Do they, like the present Pope, think Italian literature a more
enjoyable pursuit than apologetics?

The distinction between Catholicism and Romanita
has already been stressed in the American journal
Commonweal. Of course
it is possible to have the Faith without
Romanita and to have Romanita
without the Faith, but as a matter of recorded history the two have kept very
close. "Peter has spoken" remains the guarantee of orthodoxy.

It is surely (?), a journalistic trick to write of
"the Johannine era". Pope John was a pious and attractive man. Many
of the innovations, which many of us find so obnoxious, were introduced by Pius
XII.

Pope John's life at Bergamo, Rome, in the Levant, at
Paris and Venice was lived with very meagre association with Protestants until,
in his extreme old age, he found himself visited by polite clergymen of various
sects whom he greeted, as he did with the Russian atheists, with
"consummate courtesy".

I do not believe he had any conception of the true
character of modern Protestantism. I quote from an article in
Time
magazine of 10th July: "The one persuasive way of referring to Jesus today
is as a 'remarkably free man'. After the Resurrection the disciples suddenly
possessed some of the unique and 'contagious' freedom that Jesus had. In
telling the story of Jesus of Nazareth, therefore, they told it as the story of
the free man who had set them free… He who says 'Jesus is love' says that
Jesus' freedom has been contagious… Van Buren concludes that Christianity will
have to strip itself of its supernatural elements … just as alchemy had to
abandon its mystical overtones to become the useful science of Chemistry."

These words are not those of a Californian crank but
of a clergyman of the "Episcopal Church" of America, who derive what
Orders they have from the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am sure that such
questions were not raised on the much publicised meeting of the Archbishop and
Pope John.

Father Sheerin suggests that Catholic Conservatism is
the product of the defensive policy necessary in the last century against the
nationalistic-masonic-secularism of the time. I would ask him to consider that
the function of the Church in every age has been conservative — to transmit
undiminished and uncontaminated the creed inherited from its predecessors.

Not "is this fashionable notion one that we
should accept?" but "is this dogma (a subject on which we agree) the
Faith as we received it?" has been the question (as far as I know) at all
General Councils. I have seen no evidence that Pope Paul [sic] had anything
else in mind when he summoned the present Council.

Conservatism is not a new influence in the Church. It
is not the heresies of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the agnosticism
of the eighteenth century, the atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, that have been the foes of the Faith turning her from serene
supremacy to sharp controversy.

Throughout her entire life the Church has been at
active war with enemies from without and traitors from within. The war against
Communism in our own age is acute but it is mild compared with those fought and
often won by our predecessors.

Finally, a word about liturgy. It is natural to the
Germans to make a row. The torchlit, vociferous assemblies of the Hitler Youth
expressed a national passion. It is well that this should be canalised into the
life of the Church. But it is essentially un-English.

We seek no "Sieg Heils". We pray in silence.
"Participation" in the Mass does not mean hearing our own voices. It
means God hearing our voices. Only he knows who is "participating" at
Mass. I believe, to compare small things with great, that I
"participate" in a work of art when I study it and love it silently.
No need to shout.

Anyone who has taken part in a play knows that he can
rant on the stage with his mind elsewhere. If the Germans want to be noisy, let
them, But why should they disturb our devotions?

"Diversity" is deemed by the Progressives as
one of their aims against the stifling
Romanita. May they allow it to
English Catholics.

I am now old but I was young when I was received into
the Church. I was not at all attracted by the splendour of her great ceremonies
— which the Protestants could well counterfeit. Of the extraneous attractions
of the Church which most drew me was the spectacle of the priest and his server
at low Mass, stumping up to the altar without a glance to discover how many or
how few he had in his congregation; a craftsman and his apprentice; a man with
a job which he alone was qualified to do.

That is the Mass I have grown to know and love. By all
means let the rowdy have their "dialogues", but let us who value
silence not be completely forgotten.

 

Your obedient servant,

Evelyn Waugh

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29/07/2024 - 17:37

The Way of Beauty: in Catholic Answers

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Brand new Altar Rails at St Mary Magdalen's, Wandworth (London),
replacing those destroyed many years ago.
My latest on Catholic Answers.

Pope St. John Paul II wrote twenty-one years ago,

[We should not] overlook the positive contribution made by the wise use of the cultural treasures of the Church. . . . Artistic beauty . . . a sort of echo of the Spirit of God, is a symbol pointing to the mystery, an invitation to seek out the face of God made visible in Jesus of Nazareth (Ecclesia in Europa 60).

This observation would not have surprised Catholics in previous centuries. When John Paul II said it, however, it was an intervention into a highly controversial, and sometimes embittered, debate, which still rages today.

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22/07/2024 - 10:00

Mass in Dundee

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On Sunday 14th I had the privilege to attend Mass in the Lawside Convent in Dundee. Different parts of the complex now house the Marian Franciscan Friars and Sisters. Mass was celebrated by Fr Philomeno.
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20/07/2024 - 08:47

Conversation with 'Learn Latin'

The other day I had a live conversation with Diego of @latinedisce Learn Latin, on a Twitter 'space'.

@latinedisce promotes Latin, and has created free online resources to learn it.
This was a wide-ranging conversation, introducing the Traditional Mass, its history, and the way people engaged with it. If you missed it, here it is on YouTube.
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18/07/2024 - 16:31

LMS Annual General Meeting: photos

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Annual General Meeting are notoriously dull but the Latin Mass Society's are a bit different, and this year's was rather fun. It took place on the feast of SS Peter & Paul on 29th June; things have been so hectic since then I have only now got round to processing my photos.
We are especially grateful to the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory for hosting us and for the beautiful Mass which preceded the meeting proper. 
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Since we were at the Oratory we had a Newman theme. Participants were able to venerate his shrine, and our guest speaker was a Newman scholar, Prof Jacob Philipps, Interim Dean, Faculty of Education, Theology, and the Arts, StMary’s University, Twickenham, who spoke on ‘St John Henry Newman and Benedict XVI’, which you can see on YouTube here.
I also made reference to Newman in my talk, which was called ‘Newman and church & state’.
I always enjoy meeting LMS members and being able to talk to them frankly about issues that affect us all. Do consider coming to the next one, if you are a member: face-to-face interaction is more important than ever in the modern world.

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16/07/2024 - 17:24

Two more petitions to save the Traditional Mass: in the Catholic Herald

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My latest in the Catholic Herald.
Sir James MacMillan, Catholic , published on 3rd July in a British newspaper, The Times, calling on Pope Francis not to impose fresh restrictions on the Traditional Mass. I have commented extensively on this petition and the petitioners: see here.
Today, in part responding to this petition and to the persistent rumours that Pope Francis is planning these restrictions, perhaps even to be published this very day, two other letters have been published with the same intention.
First, a letter from a retired Mexican Cardinal, Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, which had been sent to Pope Francis a week ago, has been published, together with a 'Letter of Adherence' from personalities from all over the world.
Second, a petition organised by the American poet Dana Gioia, has been published with eleven signatures, representing American Catholic artists and academics.
Read it all there.
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04/07/2024 - 14:25

48 Public figures support the Traditional Mass: materials

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The Latin Mass Society's Annual Requiem in 2023, in Corpus Christi Maiden Lane
This post is to gather together links to materials on this subject.
You can see the petition and signatories here.
The Latin Mass Society's press release is here.
Opinion piece by me in OnePeterFive.

Chairman's Briefing on the petition. 

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26/06/2024 - 16:19

George Galloway on the Traditional Mass

George Galloway:
Official photo from the UK Parliament

Cross-posted from Rorate Caeli.

George Galloway, the radical left-wing politician vying for Muslim votes in Britain's current general election, who was too hot to handle for the British Labour Party and so created his own--first, the Respect Party, now the Workers' Party of Britain -- yes, that George Galloway -- loves the Traditional Mass and has advised the Pope not to restrict it.

This has emerged in an interview with Timothy Stanley in the Daily Telegraph. Galloway, who is seeking re-election as the Member of Parliament for Rochdale in England's north west, noted that he is a practicing Catholic, and a 'big fan' of Pope Francis.

Stanley, a Catholic convert who also has experience of the radical left, felt inspired to ask him about the Traditional Mass.

The article is paywalled (here) but this is the money quote:

“I’m in favour of it.” George calls it “poetry in motion”. Has he heard the rumour that the Pope is thinking of banning it? “We discussed that.” Did he advise His Holiness against a prohibition? “I did.” But he doesn’t think it will happen: “A lot of things that have emerged from the Pope are actually collegiate positions… He has a lot of enemies, so he has to rely on different factions. It’s a very back-stabbing place, rather like Parliament.”

Older readers in the US might possibly remember Galloway's testimony before Congress in 2005. In Britain, he is very well known as the foremost representative of the radical left, stranded by the Labour Party's move towards globalist managerialism. It would be simplistic to call Galloway 'Old Labour', because of his successful navigation of the new politics of ethnic minorities and Islam, but this is part of his identity, and as such he even calls himself 'socially conservative'. It is a fact that were the great Labour politicians of the past to rise up and repeat what they regarded as common sense about social issues fifty years ago, they would be denounced as 'far right' by some.

Galloway's intervention is a reminder that the Traditional Mass is not limited by party, educational background or class. It appeals to all kinds of people, and once served as an unbreakable bond of solidarity in a Catholic community with a range of ideas about how to implement the Church's teaching in the secular sphere. 

One early proponent of the Traditional Mass was s founder of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist part: Saunders Lewis. There is an article about him in the current Mass of Ages, the magazine of the Latin Mass Society. Another, Hugh Ross Williamson, had also, like Galloway, once been ejected from the Labour Party for his radicalism.

Let us hope that Pope Francis, recognising in Galloway a political soul-mate, will take his words about the Traditional Mass to heart. I understand Pope Francis has had the same advice from a Parliamentarian from the other end of the party-political spectrum: the senior Conservative backbencher and specialist in Italian affairs, Sir Edward Leigh, who is also a patron of the Latin Mass Society.

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19/06/2024 - 15:47

The Sign of Peace, for Catholic Answers

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The Kiss of Peace at the LMS Walsingham Pilgrimage 2023: High Mass in the Shrine
The Pax, the Kiss of Peace, is one of my favourite ceremonies of High Mass: one of the most dramatic and easily understood symbolic actions. The celebrant kisses the Altar and given the deacon a stylised embrace; the deacon embraces the subdeacon, the subdeacon the MC, and if there are clergy in choir it can be passed on down a whole row of them on both sides of the church.
For a photographer it is easy to miss. It only happens at High Mass with deacon and subdeacon, and not at Requiem Masses or on Maundy Thursday. At Prelatial Masses and First Masses of newly ordained priests, you get an extra chance to catch it, with the 'Assistant Priest'.
This is the historical context for the ceremony in the Novus Ordo, which sadly can take a form that feels not only somewhat secular but even disruptive and an invasion of personal space. I always think of a letter to the Catholic press from one worshipper in Bristol some years ago:
In my church, one elderly widower tours the pews 'making a meal'; of his license to to make contact with female bodies. ... When the 'feel good' moment arrives, they approach me expectactly, but I ignore such cheap, shallow, bonhomie. I have often felt like adding 'a little peace before Mass would not have gone amiss.'
My latest piece for Catholic Answers is on this topic. It begins:

The Sign of Peace, the handshake that takes place at Sunday Mass between the Our Father and the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) before Holy Communion, is sometimes a source of friction and confusion.

The friction derives from the experience of it getting out of hand—being disruptive and even an intrusion. These problems were serious enough to raise the question, at the 2009 Synod of Bishops in in Rome, of moving the Sign of Peace to before the Offertory. Here, I want to shed some light on the meaning of the rite, which helps to put the question into some context.

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At the LMS Annual Mass of Reparation in Bedford.

 

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