Latin Mass Society

Chairman's Blog

06/08/2023 - 19:15

St Catherine's Trust Summer School 2023

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We held our annual Summer School last week at St Cassian's Centre, Kintbury, in Berkshire, with the largest ever number of children: 62. Three others dropped out at the last minute, but apart from that we were at the capacity of the venue.
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These Summer Schools are supported by the Latin Mass Society. They are not Summer 'camps': it is not just fun activities, or sleeping in tents, but lessons, designed to support the children in their education and expand their horizons of Catholic thought and culture. We do a bit of Latin, introduce them to Greek, explain a bit of Gregorian Chant, look at some sacred art, and Catholic history; this year I taught some lessons on the Problem of Evil. The children answered questions on all their subjects in the quiz we had with great enthusiasm.
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We also do of course have activities, as well as liturgy and devotions. Daily Sung Mass included on on a trip to Oxford, at the Oxford Oratory.
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I'm glad there are other summer events taking place with the Traditional Mass, mostly smaller and less formalised than ours; some children do more than one over the course of the holidays. The St Catherine's Trust event, however, remains unique, after eighteen years.

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24/07/2023 - 18:51

St Walburge's, Preston, with the ICKSP

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By good fortune I was in St Walburge's, Preston, yesterday, for Sung Mass, a church that is in the care of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. It is a magnificent edifice, gradually being fixed up by the ever-active Institute. Water penetration to the sacristy and the nave of the church has been stopped, so decoration and restoration of the interior can be addressed.
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The flaking paint does not diminish the splendour of this church, and the confidence of successive Bishops of Lancaster in the Institute to revive it: it so happens that the current bishop, Patrick Swarbrick, was once a parish priest at St Walburge's and in that capacity invited Canon William Hudson ICKSP to celebrate Mass there twenty years ago. It was only some time after that initial contact that the Institute was given the church, in 2014, by Bishop Patrick Campbell.

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Although both the holiday season and during a torrential downpour (don't the two go together?) there was a good-sized congregation. The scale of the church is clearly not going to be inappropriate to the size of the apostolate in the longer term.

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16/07/2023 - 13:48

LMS AGM 2023: photos

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Our Annual General Meeting took place yesterday, and as always it was a jolly occasion, a chance for members to meet the Society's Officers and staff and spend some time together. This year, as well as a rather good cold lunch there was a book stall.
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We were addressed this year by John Smeaton, who recently honoured by taking up the position of Patron--one of several we currently have. His talk and my own will soon be available in video and podcast format.

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Missa Cantata was celebrated for us by Fr John Scott and accompanied by men of the Cathedral Choir, with chant and polyphony.

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10/07/2023 - 08:21

'Sacred and Great': booklet introducing the TLM by Joseph Shaw

I'm delighted to announce the launch of a revised edition of my booklet introducing the Traditional Latin Mass. Non-polemical and informative, this is a booklet you can safely give to your non-traditional friends, priests and bishops, or have on sale in churches and bookstalls.


In 2019 I wrote a booklet for the Catholic Truth Society, 'How to Attend the Extraordinary Form'. This is a revised version of this booklet for the American market: a little shorter, a little updated, and with fewer references to the situation in the UK.

I am very grateful to the Catholic Truth Society for giving permission for this new edition, and for Peter Kwasnieski for seeing it through the press.

Bulk discounts are available directly from the publisher:

The discount is applied automatically at checkout:
6-10 copies - 10% off
11-15 copies - 15% off
16-20 copies - 20% off
21-25 copies - 25% off
26+ copies - 30% off

US customers may do all this at the website. Customers outside the US who are interested in placing a bulk order should contact the publisher's email [info(at)osjustipress.com] for details.

Also available from Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk and so on, but without bulk discount option. 

You can still buy the CTS version, from them and from the Latin Mass Society.

Here's Peter Kwasniewski's 'unboxing video'.

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08/07/2023 - 19:24

Pilgrimage to Holywell: photos

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Today about 90 people attended a the LMS Pilgrimage to Holywell, organised jointly with the Fraternity of St Peter. Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP celebrated the Mass. A coachload of people came from the FSSP church at St Mary's, Warrington.
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We are very grateful to the priest in charge, Fr Matthew Bond, who not only allowed us the use of the church but presented the relic of St Winefride for our veneration. And also to the Schola Malvernensis, who travelled the considerable distance to accompany the Mass. I joined them for the occasion.
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This pilgrimage is in honour of the 7th century Welsh noblewoman St Winefride, Virgin and Martyr: also, the founder of a religious community. Unusually, she founded this community after her martyrdom, since she was brought back to life by her uncle St Beuno. That is the legend, and as so often this is reflected in the liturgical texts, and even the classification of her feast. 

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Her martyrdom was the occasion of the appearance of a spring of healing water: this has continued to be the instrument of miracles up to the present day, and the stone housing of this and the chapel above it is the only Medieval shrine in England and Wales not to have been destroyed during the Reformation period.

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04/07/2023 - 15:56

Interview in The European Conservative

Julian Kwasniewski was kind enough to interview me by email for The European Conservative.

It begins:

Dr. Shaw, at the beginning of this year, Os Justi Press published your latest book The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of Modernity, which I read with considerable enjoyment. I wanted to speak with you today on some further questions arising from your discussion in that book of the family and its place in the modern world. Based on your experience, can you say something about how large, traditional Catholic families, which have become something of a stereotype, differ from the current socially dominant type?

Having a large family tends to push one into a more old-fashioned approach to raising children, and away from either of the two extremes modern families fall into. One of those extremes is what we might call the ‘hippy’ model, in which you let your children do whatever they like. This is manifested in the attitude that parents should allow their children to choose for themselves what religion to have, or even how to spell. The other extreme is the ‘tiger mum’ or ‘helicopter’ model: it’s as if the parents are hovering over their children checking everything they do, and intervening if things don’t go as they want them to, and intervening in minor conflicts the child might have even when they are young adults—at university or in employment.

With a large family you can’t allow every child complete freedom, because there would quickly be conflict between the children. You also can’t try to control everything they do, since that is simply impossible. You find yourself governing a community, setting a framework for young people who have a lot of freedom but need to exercise that freedom in ways that do not impinge negatively on each other. But this is not like the liberal ideal of neutrality, since no family can be value-neutral. From the pictures on the walls to the shared activities, parents have to feed their children’s emotional and spiritual lives.

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03/07/2023 - 15:56

Stuart Chessman review The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of Modernity

Mr Stuart Chessman of the Society of St Hugh of Cluny has been kind enough to review my book The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of Modernity on his blog.

He begins:

Mr. Joseph Shaw, the chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and president of the International Una Voce Federation, offers us a book of reflections on the Church and society of today and especially on the position of the Traditional Catholic Movement. Even though the author taught philosophy at Oxford University for many years, The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity is no abstract treatise. Our author, by virtue of his office, is squarely in the midst of the liturgical wars of today. Shaw returns again and again to the refutation of attacks launched against Traditionalists by their enemies within the Church. The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity serves, first of all, as a valuable arsenal of information and arguments for the Traditionalist. And this is an honorable role! Wasn’t the City of God also inspired by the need to respond to contemporary calumnies against Christians after the fall of Rome?

Shaw, however, goes far beyond the role of a controversialist. He works to understand what is happening in the Church today. In contrast to most commentators on liturgical issues, Shaw knows that the Church is embedded in history and in society. As the title of this collection of essays indicates, liturgical questions cannot be severed from other theological issues and from the daily life and experience of the faithful. This book develops these interactions and influences. Shaw sets the controversies and deviations of the moment in a broader historical, philosophical and sociological context. This deeper understanding will be necessary to the Traditionalist in the continued conflict between the Church establishment and Catholic Tradition – a struggle that may last years, decades or even generations.

Read it all there.

See more about the book here.

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27/06/2023 - 12:34

Confirmations in Warrington

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Some good news for a change!

On Saturday I was privileged to be present at the confirmation of 22 children and adults at St Mary's, Warrington, a church belonging to the Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP). The FSSP has the privilege of the use of all the liturgical books of 1962 so this was perfectly licit, and the confirmations were carried out by the local ordinary, Archbishop Malcolm McMahon OP. 

St Mary's, once a parish church built by and served from Ampleforth Abbey, is now a shrine, and its Rector is Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP.
I was a truly splendid occasion, in the large and beautiful church, with music provided by the church's regular singers. Photos are by me.

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12/06/2023 - 17:01

How to obey the Church in the liturgy

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Maybe... like this.

My latest for OnePeterFive

Among the familiar phrases of the debate on the liturgy are ones involving obedience to the Church. “The Church asks us…”, “we must obey the Church…” and the like, generally employed by supporters of the liturgical reform. It is not immediately clear what they mean. What are these people saying when they refer to “the Church”?

When theologians want to discern the “teaching of the Church” they may be able to pick out some “extraordinary” act of the magisterium, such as an ex cathedra definition by the Pope, but very often there isn’t one available. This being so, they go to Scripture and Tradition, as containing the Deposit of Faith: they will tell us what the Church teaches. The Fathers and Doctors are witnesses to the Tradition and also draw out its implications. This is the “ordinary” magisterium of the Church, and the ordinary way in which the Church passes on the teaching which has been entrusted to her by our Lord.

This is how, ordinarily, God has chosen to reveal Himself to us; this is how, ordinarily, the Holy Spirit speaks to the Church: through what has been passed down. When people are moved to overturn established Tradition in favor of a radical new reading of Scripture, perhaps inspired by a private revelation, we can expect to hear some heresy.

This I hope is not controversial, but when it comes to the liturgy a very different attitude often takes hold. Liturgical progressives tell us that the Spirit has called them, or is calling the entire Church, to adopt some liturgical innovation: to take just one example, consider the service of the altar by females (altar girls). This overturns a tradition of only men and boys serving at Mass going back as far as the records go, which is the late 4th century (see canon 44 of the Collection of Laodicea).

Read the whole thing there.
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