Latin Mass Society

Chairman's Blog

01/05/2018 - 09:35

Alfie vs. the System

The controversy about the illness and death of Alfie Evans in Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool makes me want to say a few things to clarify certain issues. I don't have inside information about medical or other details so I won't be going into those.

In this post I want to say something about about the various agencies of the state which were involved: the National Health Service, the Courts, the Police. In similar cases the Social Services can be part of the circus. A lot of people on social media, often from outside the UK, have had some very harsh things to say about these agencies. Those of us who live here and have to deal with them, and see others deal with them, are able to have a more nuanced attitude.

There is, all things considered, a lot to be grateful for in these institutions. I've personally had very good experiences with them, both directly and indirectly. The people working in them are often overworked and under paid. They have a high degree of professionalism. They are not financially or politically corrupt or corruptible in the ways that make dealing with similar organisations in other countries a constant problem. We should be proud to live in a country where they are, basically, on your side, if you have a problem. But they have their limitations.

They have limitations of resources. They have the limitations of their training and official protocols, which can on occasion conflict with common sense. (Any fixed set of administrative rules will on occasion conflict with common sense.) And they have the limitation, from each client's point of view, of trying to see things from everyone else's point of view. This sounds reasonable but can on occasion conflict with justice.

There is another more subtle limitation which arises from these. They are highly bureaucratic and have been given tasks to perform by the State. These tasks are intended to be benign, and usually are; the problem arises when a person interacting with these agencies finds himself in the category of an obstacle to the performance of an official task. If you disagree with what the protocol says should happen next, you become a problem. You become a piece of grit in the colossal bureaucratic machinery. Everyone you deal with starts looking at you as something to be evaded, dealt with, got out of the way of the task they have been given. The harder you struggle against it, the tighter the machinery will grip you.

Sometimes it is possible to defeat the machinery, but if it is a serious matter we are talking about a truly epic struggle. What is better, if at all possible, is to keep on the right side of the protocols: to find a way of presenting your problem in line with these protocols. This is a matter of experience, social skills, and practical wisdom. If you find yourself in conflict with these agencies and lack the relevant experience, you are going to need really good advice. Not always, but often, there are things you can say, buttons you can press, which if done early in the process can turn the situation around. Because these functionaries are not, generally speaking, malignant and unreasonable people. They are just trying to do their jobs.

I don't want to exonerate the state employees involved, when their procedures start producing unjust results: they are free and responsible individuals. But the pressure on them is subtle and immense. The flip side of the professionalism I noted earlier can be an inability to see things except through the lens of the official outlook. Decades of attempts by governments to get these agencies under some kind of control, particularly, in the NHS, financial control, has led to Kafka-esque limits on their discretion and acres of paperwork to prove that what should, officially, have happened, in any interaction with the public, actually happened. The only realistic rebellion open to the employees involved is to walk away from the job, and of course many take this course. Others become so influenced by official attitudes, sometimes derived from amoral government policies, that they end up morally corrupted.

As I say, I don't have a special insight into the inside details of the case, but from a UK perspective the Alfie affair has all the hallmarks of a family who got on the wrong side of the protocols. Alfie's parents were brilliant at creating a fuss, but clearly not so good at playing the system. This never ends well. Faced with increasingly powerful pressure--the MEP, the President of Poland, the Pope, the protesters--to violate their protocols, the system doubles down and calls in the police. Short of an armed revolution, you simply can't win that way. It just isn't possible, psychologically, politically, or legally (I'm speaking loosely here), for the system to concede defeat against such a frontal assault.

I should clarify that the pressure the Evans family created caused a number of good results. It created a cause celebre: it has shone a light onto the case and drawn attention to a real legal problem. It has thereby given a huge boost to the chances of changing the law. It had other, negative, effects. Above all, however, for Alfie's family it represented all they could do, and at that level their efforts must be respected. But in my judgement it was never going to have the necessary effect on the bureaucratic mind-set to get Alfie out of Alder Hey.

I'm not saying that's how things should be: obviously not. I'm just saying that this is how things are, and Catholics in the UK have developed robust and efficient networks of mutual aid to deal with it as best we can, centred around the Pro-Life movement. It is clear that only quite late in the day was the Evans family getting the benefit of this network, and even then it was not as systematic as it might have been. This emerges, for example, from the statement of the Christian Legal Centre here. I don't know if ultimate outcomes could have been different, but it is clear that things could have been handled better.

From the Catholic and pro-life side the lesson is a familiar one: families don't always get the support they need because they often don't know where to look for it. Unless you are already plugged into the Pro-Life movement, it may not cross your mind that there are several extremely experienced and quite well-resourced organisations willing to give you legal help for free, for example, when some hideous problem like this rears its head.

The visible, hierarchical Church could form the necessary connection between ordinary people and these sources of help, because the Church is closely identified with the Pro-Life position and everyone knows where to find the local priest and the local bishop. But thereby hangs another problem. The policy of the hierarchical Church has been to avoid, as best they can, any fight with the State since the Abortion Act. To say that with hindsight the Evans family made mistakes and that the medical profession has been unjustly maligned, as some commentators are saying, does not suggest that the English bishops were right to sit out the crisis on the sidelines. On the contrary, it suggests the opposite.

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27/04/2018 - 10:00

Crisis of celibacy

In light of the latest news about clerical celibacy, I thought I'd repost this from March 2013, with a new photo. I hope to write something about the Alfie Evans affair soon.

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LMS Priest Training Conference April 2018

Dr Edward Peters, the well-known canonist, explains what he means by a 'crisis of celibacy' in a post which is well worth reading in full.

[T]he last four decades have seen, I suggest, a steady retreat from defending that value in canon law and pastoral practice—married clergy now outnumber celibate clergy in many arch/dioceses, thousands of married ministers have recently come into full communion with Rome and been ordained priests, the observance of clerical continence has been abandoned in the West, and the quasi-decriminalization of attempted clerical marriage itself (as opposed to remaining in pseudo-marriage) has been accomplished. Any one of these developments would have been portentous; but that they have occurred simultaneously is, I suggest, undeniable evidence that clerical celibacy is in crisis.

While in principle the Western discipline of priestly celibacy is still defended at the highest levels of the Church, with vigour indeed, its legal and practical ramifications have been eroded. We are getting to the point at which it needs either to be reasserted in some tangible, public way, or the gap between theory and practice needs to be closed from the other direction.

In the meantime, the forces of liberalism are aiming at celibacy with all their might. The Tablet seems to have become obsessed with the issue. The fact that you can get even orthodox Catholics to say 'Well obviously this is a matter of Church discipline rather than sacramental validity' presents an ever-tempting opening. If it is a matter of discipline, it can change, right?

Liberals appear to think that celibacy is some kind of steam-valve which can be opened to relieve all sorts of problems in the Church: sex abuse, the shortage of vocations, Mass attendance and who knows what else. This is a mistake for two reasons: first, it completely misdiagnoses the vocations (and other) crisis(es); and secondly, because what Dr Peters is talking about it is true, by parallel, with a large number of other issues. I want to deal with the first in a separate post, but what I mean by the second point can be illustrated like this.

In the official documents of the Church, confession is given (obviously) the orthodox definition and explanation: it is necessary for the remission of mortal sin (eg Catechism of the Catholic Church 1457). Once upon a time that was a reality which was manifested in all sorts of ways, in all sorts of disciplines and practices. You could tell Catholics took it seriously because they queued up for confession on Saturday afternoons and were selective about when they went to communion. You knew they took it seriously because of the architectural prominence given to confessionals in the church, and the stress on sin and confession in preaching and catechism. Now, those outward things were not necessary for it to be true that the Church taught what she taught, some of them might even have be better done differently. But today, in many places, the teaching on the necessity of confession is a matter of theory, not practice. It is not manifested in how churches look, what Catholics do, what priests preach, what is taught in RE. And it is not in the hearts of many Catholics as belief.

The same can be said about the reality of the Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. About the Sacrificial nature of the Mass. About the identification of the priest with Christ. About the authority of bishops. About the usefulness of devotions, sacramentals, and blessings. About the intercession of the saints. About the Divinity of Christ. About the indissolubility of marriage. About, in fact, pretty well every aspect of the Church's doctrine and moral reaching. This has happened because of a strange alliance between people who think, or claim to think, that the teachings are so secure and so obvious that it is not necessary to labour them, and people who think, or claim to think, that the doctrines are embarassing, off-putting, or just wrong, and should disappear. Actually, both explanations are sometimes given by the same person, addressing different audiences.

Bl John XXIII was not immune from the first temptation. The high-water mark of this attitude must surely be his speech opening the Second Vatican Council:

'Not that the need to repudiate and guard against erroneous teaching and dangerous ideologies is less today than formerly. But all such error is so manifestly contrary to rightness and goodness, and produces such fatal results, that our contemporaries show every inclination to condemn it of their own accord—especially that way of life which repudiates God and His law, and which places excessive confidence in technical progress and an exclusively material prosperity.'

Admittedly, things did look different in 1962. Back then it looked as if the rope bridge between the words printed in the Catechism and the lived experience of Catholics would still be strong enough to carry traffic if a few of the cords were loosened or cut. Maybe that was true. But then things got a bit out of hand...

Traditionalists like it when things are returned to their former state in the Church, at least in many ways: when the altar rails go back, when people genuflect properly, when Friday abstinence is restored; and of course we like the old liturgy. This is not nostalgia, however. While each thing is neither necessary nor sufficient for lively faith or a true Catholic understanding, they help. That is what they are there for, to help Catholics live the life those dusty old documents say we should live. We need all the help we can get. When the help is taken away, things go wrong. It's true of celibacy, it is true of everything.

23/04/2018 - 13:05

Sewing Retreat 2019: booking open

The Guild of St Clare had a hugely over-subscribed 'Sewing Retreat' near Oxford for the second year running, so for the future two are planned: one at roughly the same time of year in 2019 and the same vanue, near Oxford, and one for this autumn in a new venue, Douai Abbey, which is between Reading and Newbury. Booking for both is open on the Latin Mass Society website.

Last Saturday the Guild had its first Vestment Mending Day in the LMS Office, where most of the LMS vestment collection is held. There will be another on May 12th; email the Guild if you'd be interested in taking part (places are limited).

From the Guild:

Bookings are now open for both forthcoming Sewing Retreats. Registration for the one at Douai Abbey, taking place from 23rd-25th November 2018, can be completed here. For the retreat at Boars Hill, 1st-3rd February 2019, book here.

Vestment mending day at the LMS Office, Sat 21st April

Places are limited on both these retreats: please don't delay if you are keen to come.

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21/04/2018 - 10:00

Feast of the English Martyrs, Didcot

Fr Philip Pennington Harris, Parish Priest of the Church of the English Martyrs in Didcot, is celebrating his parish's Patronal Feast on Friday 4th May with a Traditional Missa Cantata. It will be accompanied by the Schola Abelis of Oxford. Join us!

The church is at 15 Manor Crescent, Didcot OX11 7AJ (click for a map).

Mass is at 7:30pm.

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19/04/2018 - 19:04

Pilgrimage in honour of the English Martyrs in Preston, Sat 5th May

The Latin Mass Society with the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest is organising a pilgrimage to the magnificent historic church of the English Martyrs in Preston, Lancashire, on Saturday 5th May. (The national feast of the Martyrs of England and Wales falls on 4th May.)

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17/04/2018 - 10:00

Bishop Schneider to say Mass in London 24th May

Bishop Athanasius Schneider will celebrate Mass for the Latin Mass Society in St Mary Moorfields in London (click for a map) on 24th May at 6pm.
We will have some Tallis and other poluyphony from Cantus Magnus under Matthew Schellhorn.
After Mass Bishop Schneider will give a talk in the church's basement.

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16/04/2018 - 10:00

LMS Priest Training: private Masses

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Another characteristic feature of these conferences are the private Masses. This time I was able to see not only private Masses before breakfast with one server, but others celebrated as a demonstration to priest participants.

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We are very fortunate in this venue, Prior Park, since in addition to the High Altar there are four beautiful side-altars. Once upon a time, these would have been used daily by the priests teaching in the school. Today, it is wonderful to see them being used simultaneously as originally intended.

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The chapels themselves are testimony to an attitude to the Mass to which the Latin Mass Society is devoted: that each celebration of Mass has great value. Even if there aren't many people there - even if there is no congregation at all - priests should want to celebrate Mass daily, and the Faithful should be glad to stipend them to celebrate for particular intentions. As the Congregation for Clergy recently reiterated, the priest's spirituality, the Holy Souls in Purgatory, and the good of the Church and the world are all advanced by each celebration of Mass.

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15/04/2018 - 12:00

LMS Priest Training: training sessions

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We are very fortunate in having many people with liturgical expertise, both clerics and laymen, willing to spend time training priests and servers in the ceremonies of the Traditional Mass.

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Nothing could be a better use of the time and resources of the Latin Mass Society, and of our supporters and friends, than this training, especially as it is carried out by people who really know what they are doing. Not me, I should add: my contribution has been only to make a photographic record of it.


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As I noted in the previous post in this series, this Training Conference was particularly well-attended: not like the very early ones, when we had forty priests turning up, the pent-up demand of decades, but well-attended all the same, notably by priests and seminarians and deacons who needed to learn the Mass from scratch.

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We also had a lot of servers attending. The difficulty for some of them after this conference will be finding opportunities to serve and MC regularly at Sung and High Masses near them. What we have been able to do is have a bash at the chicken-and-egg problem of there not being occasions for local servers to gain experience of such Masses, and these Masses not being celebrated because of the lack of servers with experience.

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This conference, like the last one, was also an opprtunity for our Musical Director Thomas Neil to rehearse quite intensively with his polyphonic choir, who were resident at the conference, and perform with them every day, Monday to Thursday. The music at the two Masses I attended was superb. This is another example of the building up of expertise, experience, and relationships which will bear fruit for many years to come.

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14/04/2018 - 19:11

LMS Priest Training: public liturgies

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I was able to attend the LMS Priest Training Conference for its final two days, on Wednesday and Thursday. In this post are photographs of the two High Masses of those days, celebrated respectively by Fr Thomas Cahill and Fr James Mawdsley FSSP.

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Prior Park is an independent Catholic boarding school (on holiday last week). The splendid chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows, was built by Bishop Baines in 1830, when the site was intended to be a seminary.

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The Priest Training Conference this year was one of our most successful, and the third to take place at Prior Park. Because of the early Easter last year we were unable to book it for the Easter holiday and it didn't take place. That problem will recur next year; however the demand for places this year means that we may look for an alternative venue.

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This year's Conference was attended by priests from seven dioceses, plus the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, four seminarians and two permanent deacons. We also had a good number of trainee servers.

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12/04/2018 - 10:00

Bishops have become strangers to each other: here’s why

The Tower of Babel (Wikipedia Commons)

Here's the feature article of mine published by the Catholic Herald last weekend. It's not on the website.


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In the 1973 film Catholics,Martin Sheen—playing a Jesuit come to bring a remote Traditionalist monastery to heel—informs the abbot that Vatican IV has forbidden the Latin Mass and the Sacrament of Confession, except for mortal sins. Author Brian Moore’s dystopian vision has not come to pass, and one reason to doubt that it ever will is that if a future Pope wished to call a General Council, let alone two, the assembled bishops would not be able to communicate with each other. Unlike in 1962, when the Second Vatican Council opened, they do not have a common language.

Pope Benedict called Latin ‘the language of the Church’. Evelyn Waugh imagined a Catholic British army officer arranging a Requiem Mass for his wife, killed in the Blitz, in a foreign country with a local priest, in Latin: there being no other common language. C.S. Lewis conducted an extended correspondence with an Italian priest, now canonised, St Giovanni Calabria, in Latin, for the same reason. By the time of Vatican II fluency in Latin among prelates could no longer be taken for granted, and a lot of work was done by experts to compose speeches and brief bishops about the significance of debates. At least, in the 1960s, hundreds of such experts existed. Today, they do not.


Readers might assume that the Church can carry on as a kind of religious United Nations, with scores of translators in little boxes telling assembled bishops what is being said. But the real work at the UN and similar institutions is done in committees, where business is conducted as much as possible in a single, mutually comprehensible language. Senior diplomats, naturally, are able to communicate fluently in the most important languages of international institutions, above all in English.


The world’s bishops are not diplomats or linguists, and they have no common language. In Roman synods they are divided into language groups, which means that they will never effectively communicate with those they may most need to hear: those with significantly different cultures, experiences, and insights. The melding together of different views is not done by the bishops in discussion, but by the synod secretariat, in drawing up draft documents in Italian, which are then translated into various other languages. Hearing a translation of a translation of other bishops’ views, which may have been expressed in a second language the first time round, is a hardly a meeting of minds. This process is a terrible way to form a consensus, or draft a theologically precise document.

Proposing Latin as a means of communication may seem quixotic, but the problem with it—that many people would have to learn it—would not be avoided by choosing a modern vernacular. Should we work for the day when seminarians, and other educated Catholics, can exchange ideas in Italian? English? Spanish? We might as well learn Latin.


Latin’s advantages are huge, since it has been the Church’s language of administration, law, and teaching for fifteen centuries. It is impossible, in fact, to engage seriously with historic Catholic thought and culture without Latin. Furthermore, precisely because it is no-one’s cradle language, it gives no nation an unfair advantage. Italians and Spanish-speakers may find learning it a bit easier, but English-speakers receive a special benefit from engagement with language with Latin’s more formal grammar. They needn’t torture themselves with Cicero’s convoluted perorations or Virgil’s metrical metaphors, however, any more than business-users of English need to study Chaucer. Latin need not be hard.


St Giovanni Calabria. His correspondance with
C.S. Lewis has been published here.

This year, Pope Francis promulgated a new document on seminary education, Veritatis gaudium. It demands, like its many predecessors, that future priests learn Latin: not for the liturgy, but to the far higher standard required for studies. The few seminarians who actually do get a bit of Latin can learn some interesting things. While modern Church documents are drafted in a vernacular language, they generally have to be translated into Latin to go into the Church’s official records. This seems to have become an opportunity for a final review of the contents: things are toned down or tightened up. This process came into public view when it was revealed that the first, French, edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church took a significantly more accommodating line on lying than the later, but official, Latin version. On other occasions, a progressive spin has been given to texts when the official Latin is turned into English and other vernaculars: most notoriously with the documents of Vatican II, and with the ‘old ICEL’ translation of the Mass.


The problem is not Latin: the problem is the process of translation to and from a language that most educated Catholics cannot understand. It will not be solved until there is a language which most educated Catholics do understand. The Church needs a common language. The Church needs Latin.

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