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Latin Mass Society
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  3. Chairman's Blog

Chairman's Blog

    25/04/2020 - 10:00

    Sex and shame
    My latest on LifeSite.
    I’d like to add something to my recent post about ‘consequence-free sex’, something more about the motivation for chastity. 
    In that post, I noted various consequences of the lifestyle of “serial monogamy shading into promiscuity”, which is the expected, if not universal, way of life for unmarried people. 
    Among these consequences are the spiritual consequences, which are of ultimate importance. 
    Chastity requires heroic resistance to social pressure, and the best foundation for this resistance is a supernatural love of virtue. Nevertheless, in this post I want to say something about another aspect of the situation which tends to be ignored: we might call it disgust at sin, or shame.
    When I was a philosophy student, I heard the late Prof. Bernard Williams talking about virtue, and how virtue concepts change over time. There is something in this: the conception of honor found in Homer, for example, is somewhat different from that found in Dickens. The example he used, however, was chastity. As a virtue concept, he said, it had completely lost its applicability in modern moral discourse. It no longer has any meaning.
    Williams was wrong. To see this, do an internet search for the term “slut-shaming”. 
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    24/04/2020 - 17:17

    LMS shop re-opened; CTS booklet available

    My CTS booklet, 'How to Attend the Extraordinary Form', has arrived in physical form, thanks to the efficiency of the Catholic Truth Society, whose printers and distributors have managed to keep working through the lockdown.

    The Latin Mass Society has decided to mail a copy to each of the priests on our mailing list, in the UK and Ireland. That's more than 150. In the peculiar circumstances of the times this could be done most easily from my home.

    At the same time I am delighted to announce that the Latin Mass Society's online shop has re-opened. We are still working almost entirely from home but we have made arrangments to be able to fulfil orders, although this may still be a little slower than normal.

    So please take yourself off to our shop to buy more copies of this booklet and of all the other things we sell: members get a 5% discount, and there is a bulk discount for the booklet. (You can of course also get the booklet direct from the CTS.)

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    23/04/2020 - 14:20

    Some good, personal, news
    Ecce hæreditas Domini, filii ;
    merces, fructus ventris.
    Sicut sagittæ in manu potentis,
    ita filii excussorum.
    Beatus vir qui implevit desiderium suum ex ipsis :
    non confundetur cum loquetur inimicis suis in porta.
    Ps 126:3-5

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    22/04/2020 - 13:03

    52nd Anniversary of the Abortion Act

    Another LifeSite piece. The anniversary will be Monday 27th.

    Next Monday, April 27th is the 52nd anniversary of the coming into effect of the UK’s Abortion Act (1967), the key legislation which opened up abortion on a mass scale in England, Wales, and Scotland. 
    The government has been celebrating early, first by imposing abortion on Northern Ireland, to which the Act never applied, and then by loosening the rules on ‘do it yourself’, home abortions, in the context of the Coronavirus epidemic.
    A lot of things have happened since 1967 in the UK, as in other jurisdictions, which have clarified the issues at stake. The Member of Parliament who sponsored the passage of this law—it was not a government bill—later admitted that he had grossly underestimated the number of abortions that would be performed under the Act. 
    If the vast number of deaths the Act would bring about had been foreseen when it was being debated, it would have been much harder to get it passed. The same goes for the way that safeguards have been interpreted and evaded. But isn’t that always the way? The radical agenda is forced through with the claim that each change is quite minor. When it turns out that it is anything but, the promoters say, oh well, but there’s no going back now.

    Read the rest on LifeSite.

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    21/04/2020 - 13:01

    Harvard's attack on home educatioin

    My recent article for LifeSite.

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

    Harvard Law School appears to be coordinating an attack on home-education. A planned conference appears to be intended as a pile-on by critics of homeschooling. Harvard Magazine has published an approving summary of an 80-page article in the Harvard Law Review by Professor Elizabeth Bartholet about why home-education should be banned. The Harvard Magazine account cites no dissenting or alternative views. 

    Wags on social media have pointed out that the cartoon accompanying Harvard Magazine’s piece manages to misspell “Arithmetic” (“Arithmatic”). Matthew Peterson (@docMJP) definitely won Twitter with his observation, “If you replace ‘homeschooling’ with ‘attending Harvard’ a lot of the article makes sense.” He illustrated:
    “We have an essentially unregulated regime in the area of elite Ed,” @docMJP asserts. All 50 states have laws that make education compulsory, & state constitutions ensure a right to education, “but if you look at the legal regime governing elite colleges, there are very few requirements that professors teach anything of value.” Even apparent requirements such as submitting curricula, or providing evidence that teaching and learning are taking place, he says, aren’t necessarily enforced.
    Since the article, like a great deal of elite education, is patently driven by ideological concerns, the point is well made.
    What of the underlying academic article? My brief review of it suggests that it suffers from three fundamental flaws.
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    20/04/2020 - 14:08

    Fr Anthony Conlon, Requiescat in pace

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    Fr Anthony Conlon died last night after a long illness. He had been the National Chaplain of the Latin Mass Society for many years until 2009 and continued to celebrate Masses for us in many different places.

    He was a priest of Westminster Archdiocese but became Chaplain to the Oratory School, and when he retired from that he became Parish Priest of nearby Goring. This was in my own area of local activity so I often asked him to celebrate the 'occasional' Masses I organise around Oxford in odd places.

    He was also for many years a Chaplain of the British Association of the Order of Malta, and in this context could be addressed as 'Monsignor'.

    These photographs show him celebrating the Traditional Mass in the chapel of Milton Manor; in Our Lady of Light, Long Crendon; Our Lady and St Anne, Caversham (at the LMS annual Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Caversham); in St Mary Moorfields (for the 10 Year annivesary Requiem Mass of Micahel Davies); and in St James', Spanish Place (for the Requiem of Prince Rupert Loewenstein).

    Another image of him in Milton Manor adorns the front cover our our Ordinary Prayers booklet.

    We will organise a splendid Requiem for him of course: as soon as we can. In the meantime he richly deserves our remembrance and prayers.

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    19/04/2020 - 10:00

    The Bishops and Sex Education

    My latest on LifeSite.

    A key quotation:

    A stray item of good news, like an isolated beam of sunlight during a storm, emerges today on sex education in the U.K. Warwickshire County Council has withdrawn a particularly bad sex education program which it was imposing on its schools. Christian Today reports.

    "Church leaders from across Warwickshire welcomed the move. They said, er, they said... sorry, actually they said nothing, at least not anything that has reached any public media outlet. Just as they apparently had nothing to say when the problems with the programme were first exposed."


    Read the whole thing.

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    18/04/2020 - 11:08

    Bach's Passion: from isolation

    The Oxford Bach Soloists have surpassed themselves with this performance of Bach's Passion. They are raising money for Help Musicians UK: donate here. 

    There is more about this on their website here.

    Episode 1

    Episode 2

    Episode 3

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    17/04/2020 - 10:00

    Thoughts on the dating scene

    My latest on LifeSite.

    The world into which we send our young people is unlike our ancestors’ world in many ways. It is organized on principles of reward and punishment that combine in an incoherent way, and therefore send mixed signals. In certain respects, it has become difficult to combine virtue and natural happiness with worldly success, and this creates painful choices.
    Modernity likes to claim that the opposite is true: that it was our ancestors who suffered this dilemma on account of their “artificial” social conventions. Notably, these made sexual activity outside marriage less attractive, and that is something many people in all ages have been tempted to do. So, the modern argument goes, that was artificial, and everyone is better off now that those conventions have, for nearly everyone and for practical purposes, disappeared. People can do what they like, and this is obviously a good thing, isn’t it? 
    It is not, however, a foregone conclusion that satisfying our immediate, natural, sexual desires is compatible with our dearest long-term objectives. The question requires some serious thought.
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    16/04/2020 - 12:46

    On Criticising fellow Catholics

    Cross posted from Rorate Caeli.

    I spend more time on Twitter than perhaps I should, but even so I tend to miss some of the nuances of the increasingly rancorous internecine Twitter arguments taking place between people who, one might think, should be on the same side, and if follower numbers are a guide to moral seriousness (which they are not), should know better. I doubt I have anything very edifying to learn by scrolling back through all the accusations and replies, but one thing which is characteristic of the latest, as of many other, Twitter spats, is that it has come down to catty generalizations about the character of Catholics attending Mass in different liturgical forms, or offered by different categories of priests.

    This reminds me of the claim once made by English Protestants, that one is more likely to find one’s umbrella has been stolen from the back of a Catholic church than from a Protestant one. As Oscar Wilde put it, “The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.”


    It is alarming to see this prim, Pharisaical nonsense raise its head again in online debates among supposedly Catholic commentators seeking to do down those who attend the Traditional Mass, or Masses celebrated by priests of the SSPX, or anyone else. I have zero interest in denying such claims: they should not be answered, but treated with contempt.

    It should be obvious that when it is a small group which is at issue, matters could go in two different directions. If it is a well-managed cult, potential recruits will be allowed to see only a carefully curated and thoroughly drilled selection of grinning devotees, who will be terribly friendly and nice. If it is not managed like that, then newcomers’ experiences will depend on who they happen to meet, and may well be dominated by people whose fondness for the sound of their own voice is not matched by intellectual or emotional maturity. Only when you get to know the regulars a bit, does it become clear to what extent the people you first met are, or are not, representative of the congregation as a whole.

    This, I say, should be obvious. Casual experience of even a small congregation offers absolutely no guidance in making a fair evaluation of the group.

    In larger groups, one can of course find every possible kind of person. I wish I could take some of these Twitter warriors on a tour of London’s great Catholic churches, where I could introduce them to some of the interesting people who attend perfectly normal and mainstream churches. Did I say, attend? Some of them more or less live there. The side chapels at Westminster Cathedral are regularly used by homeless people, sometimes with mental health issues, as a warm place to sleep. Others are there from pious motivations, and shamble up to Holy Communion at certain Masses as regular as clockwork. One individual always carries a large statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Another wears a plastic coat covered in writing about the imminence of the Great Chastisement. Another I know constantly holds in front of her face, while in church, a piece of paper, presumably with prayers written on it. As a priest friend of mine says, “All the crazies come to Jesus”. And you know what? Why shouldn’t they?

    The most unpleasant experience I have had at the hands of a fellow lay Catholic was in the middle of Mass at a church I then attended occasionally. A man crossed from one side to the other in order to tick me off at some length about the behavior of my small children. He wasn’t objecting to noise, but seems to have thought I should have had them all on their knees. The experience left me speechless, which is pretty unusual for me. However, because I knew the priest and some of the people there, I was afterwards given a bit of background on this fellow, and a few years later I heard of his death. He died fortified by the Sacraments, having been reconciled with long-estranged family members. It was certainly a bad thing that he’d taken out his frustrations on a young family he did not know, but I am glad that he was never driven away from attending Mass.

    Suppose you show me a whole congregation of people like that. Such a thing is possible. Where should they go? What would you do with them? Should they be excommunicated for being annoying?

    The best reply to the attitude that Catholic congregations should only be made up of nice people was made by Evelyn Waugh. When challenged for being the rather prickly character that he way, he replied, “You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.” It is no small irony that Oscar Wilde himself ended his life, not at all respectable, a sinner and a broken man, in the arms of Holy Mother Church.

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