Latin Mass Society

Chairman's Blog

09/09/2023 - 11:24

Byrd Festival in London

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The Latin Mass Society is sponsoring a festival of William Byrd's Catholic liturgical music, to mark the 400th anniversary of his death, in London. You can see the full programme of Masses here. William Byrd, one of England's greatest composers, managed to combine a job at the court of Queen Elizabeth I ('Bloody Bess') not only with his Catholic Faith, but active support of the underground Catholic community through his composing.

Because these Masses are Traditional Masses, we are able to use not only his well-known Mass settings (he wrote Masses for 3, 4, and 5 voices), but pieces from his 'Gradualia', which give polyphonic settings to a vast number of Mass propers (Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory, and Communion). We have carefully planned the festival to enable these pieces to be sung, not only in the context of the traditional liturgy, as he intended, but on the correct feast days.
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They are being sung by the Latin Mass Society's polyphonic consort, the Southwell Consort, which combines professional singers with singers who have received training but who have not pursued singing as a career. The opportunity to sing these wonderful pieces has been enthusiastically taken up by members of the consort, who are regularly fielding about 20 singers on these occasions.

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Last evening I attended the second Mass of the series in St Mary Magdalen's, Wandsworth, which had a congregation of about 85. Mass was celebrated by the Parish Priest, Canon Martin Edwards. The majority of the Masses are taking place in Corpus Christi Maiden Lane, on Mondays at 6:30pm.

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04/09/2023 - 19:12

Walsingham Pilgrimage 2023: photos

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Photo by John Aron

The Latin Mass Society's annual Walking Pilgrimage to Walsingham continues its post-Traditionis Custodes rapid growth: whereas before Covid we were treading water at 80-90 pilgrims, this year we have 200, and are bursting out of various churches and venues.
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Photo by John Aron

I'm grateful for a charming write-up by Thomas Colsey of the Catholic Herald which can be seen here. Here are some photos.

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Photo by John Aron

Many thanks to the more than 30 volunteers and all the pilgrims who made this such a success.
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Photo by John Aron

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02/09/2023 - 11:29

Iota Unum talks in London this autumn

After a break for the summer, we resume the Iota Unum series with three talks for the autumn.

They 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 will be a charge of £5 on the door to cover refreshments and other expenses.

28th Sept (Thurs), Joseph Shaw: Clericalism and Clerical Abuse

20th October (Fri), Fr Thomas Crean OP: Can a Christian be a restorationist?

24th Nov (Fri) Henry Sire: What next for Pope Francis?

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Fr Thomas Crean OP at a Guild of St Clare Sewing Retreat

Henry Sire

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08/08/2023 - 18:54

On liturgical abuses: for Catholic Answers

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Fr Alan Robinson of Corpus Christi Maiden Lane. Note what he's doing 
with his fingers: he has to hold forfinger and thumb together from the
Consecration to the washing of his fingers after Communion.
My latest for Catholic Answers is about liturgical abuses. It is an interesting and important topic and one to which I have devoted a fair amount of time to over the years. But I also feel a bit detached from it, since this debate is all about the Novus Ordo. Attending the Traditional Mass provides an opportunity to worship God without worrying about this issue, except on very rare occasions.
People sometimes say: surely liturgical abuses are possible in the TLM too? In one sense they are actually easier, as there are more rules to break. There was an old joke about how many mortal sins a priest could commit while saying Mass. Many of these things would be invisible to the people, however, and the rule-defined nature of it inculcated, and continues to inculcate, a very different attitude to the liturgy from that characteristic of the Novus Ordo. It is more likely that a priest will break the rules that do exist, if he is trained up to use his own words in numerous places, and to experiment with countless options. The Novus Ordo has a distinct spirit and liturgical culture: everyone knows this. And this culture is not about strict adherence to the rules.
On rare occasions priests have done bad things with the TLM. Many years ago, England, there was a priest who wanted to use altar girls. Many years before that there was a priest who wanted to use the Novus Ordo calendar. The rules however were very clear cut, and supported by Rome at the time. And perhaps most importantly, the faithful had no time for it at all. They voted with their feet.
This is ultimately how the rules must be maintained: through a shared liturgical culture, reinforced in all sorts of ways by priests, people, and the hierarchy. This is possible with the Traditional Mass. I'm not sure it is with the Novus Ordo. Even to try would be to invite endless and often quite vicious conflict.
I don't argue for that in this piece: I simply invite readers to think about the reasons for the rules. Some of them are very important, and they can't just be allowed to collapse. 
A key quote from my piece:
Pope John Paul’s documents condemn laxity on liturgical law in the strongest terms, but ultimately, they failed to curb it. Their failure was symbolized by Pope Francis washing the feet of a non-Catholic woman on Holy Thursday in 2013. The law was not changed to allow the washing of women’s feet until 2016, and the new rule still excludes non-Christians from the rite. Pope Francis was certainly making a telling, symbolic, point: the battle over liturgical law is over, and the legalists have lost.

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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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