Outline for Prayer Vigil
On the occasion of the 99 names of Allah being sung in Westminster Cathedral
Introduction
We gather peacefully to witness to the Catholic faith as presented in the Nicene Creed and to express our love for the Holy Name of Jesus. We bear no ill will towards our Muslim brothers and sisters. In accordance with the teaching of Jesus Christ, we love them and we pray for them.
We also pray for the Catholic Church in England and Wales, for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and for all those who have care of Westminster Cathedral, especially the Cathedral Administrator, Mgr Mark Langham.
We believe that it is wrong to sing the 99 names of Allah in a concert in the Cathedral. The Cathedral is dedicated to the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ and was built by our forefathers in the faith for Catholic worship.
Programme
Our vigil of prayer, will include the following prayers, hymns and scripture readings:
- Credo III
- The five sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary
- The Divine Mercy Chaplet
- Philippians 2.5-11
- The Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus
- Matthew 28.18-20
- The Litany of Loreto
- Salve Regina
- Christus Vincit
19 June 2007
27 comments:
Thank you so much, Father, from all those who will be there with you very much in spirit.
Well done for this initiative Fr Tim. I'm sorry I won't be able to join you. For those of you who are on facebook, any photos or comments from tonight can be uploaded to here
May I suggest Act of Consecration and Reparartion to the Sacred Heart, if time permits - since we are in the month of June.
God Bless.
Thank you Father - our little prayer group in Liverpool area will join our hearts to your prayers tonight. Plus - love the Blog site - visit every day for some orthodox support!
Fabulous Fr. What on earth are they thinking of? It's beyond comprehension...& surely sacriligious.
Father, I really admire what you are doing - if I lived in London I would be with you. I'll follow the prayers and readings you have outlined that evening and would urge others who can't be there to do the same in solidarity.
God bless you.
Paulinus
I will be there in spirit
hope it is a good turnout.
Dominie
Thank you Father for doing this - I will not be there physically but will go down to my local church later today to do a Holy Hour specifically with this in mind.
Wishing you God's abundant blessings and the protection of Our Lady.
That this concert is taking place at The Cathedral is a great tragedy.
Father,
It is clear to me that Christ would want all people to come to know and love Him. Like many others, I disagree with this event. Would it be possible to dedicate our prayers as follows
-that God in his mercy would overlook any offense caused by this event.
-that through the action of the Holy Spirit this event could be turned to draw all those exposed to it in anyway, to our Lord Jesus Christ.
My family will join our prayers to yours tonight in the sure and certain knowledge that God's Will always prevails.
God Bless
If only I could be there! Like many others, I'll be there in spirit!
I will say a prayer for you all; I hope the witness given is fruitful.
Just can't make it for tonight's prayer vigil but will add extra decades to our family rosary this evening to unite our efforts to yours. God Bless all that will be there for the vigil.
This is scandalous and outrageous in the extreme. What are our Catholic leaders thinking when they allow our Faith to be mocked like this. And you can bet that muslim faces all over the UK will be grinning all the way back to mecca!!!!
i'm very tempted to post concert details at the local mosque in Birmingham re the 99 names of Jesus! But i haven't the courage & what are the odds that they'd allow it? Not very high are they!
We Catholics must be a pushover..& i'm mighty sick of it!
Hope all goes well. It is beyond comprehension what they are doing. Even though I am unble to make it, I will be thinking of you all.
I know this is off-topic, but you might want to make the contents the subject of a post of your own. With the Day for Life coming up the following important newly-published statistics concerning abortions in 2006 should provide useful material for homily preparation.
This bulletin summarises information from the abortion notification forms returned to the Chief Medical Officers of England and Wales in respect of abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2006.
Key facts:=
In 2006, for women resident in England and Wales:
the total number of abortions was 193,700, compared with 186,400 in 2005, a rise of 3.9%
the age-standardised abortion rate was 18.3 per 1,000 resident women aged 15-44, compared with 17.8 in 2005
the abortion rate was highest at 35 per 1,000, for women age 19.
the under-16 abortion rate was 3.9 and the under-18 rate was 18.2 per 1,000 women, both higher than in 2005
87% of abortions were funded by the NHS; of these, just over half (55%) took place in the independent sector under NHS contract
89% of abortions were carried out at under 13 weeks gestation; 68% were at under 10 weeks
medical abortions accounted for 30% of the total compared with 24% in 2005
2,000 abortions (1%) were under ground E, risk that the child would be born handicapped
Non-residents:
in 2006 there were 7,400 abortions for non-residents carried out in hospitals and clinics in England and Wales (7,900 in 2005)
God keep you all safe, Father. You will be in my prayers this evening.
Thank you, Father, for bearing witness to the Faith. I wish I could be with you.
This from Mgr Langham:
Mgr. Mark Langham, Administrator of Westminster Cathedral explains the background to the concert and Sir John Tavener's composition.
‘The Beautiful Names’ is a concert performance (not a liturgical act of worship) of a new work by John Tavener. In discussion with him it was agreed from the beginning that a work by a catholic composer – Tomas Luis de Victoria - would be included in the programme, to emphasise that there is one God worshipped by Christians and Moslems. As Lumen Gentium says of Moslems, 'together with us they worship the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.' The Holy Father himself underlined this when he prayed in a Mosque in Turkey.
As the chief Catholic Church in this country, Westminster Cathedral must reflect the Church's concern to dialogue with those of other faiths. Firm in our own beliefs, and never failing to proclaim Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Light, we must nevertheless heed the call (in the words of Nostra Aetate) to 'recognize what is true and holy' in other faiths 'which often reflect a ray of truth that enlightens all men.'
In the present world climate, this prayerful dialogue can help achieve the hope expressed by John Tavener, that his work will contribute to an 'inward healing of the appalling strife that permeates the modern world.'
Thank you for doing this Father. I'm sure many people feel uneasy about it and can't think how it has been allowed. Would you include the Divine Praises? I seem to remember they were originally written to make reparation against blasphemy and profanity. God bless your work.
Amette
Thank you Father and all of your group. Living in Newcastle prevents us from joining you this evening otherwise all of our family would be there. We will join in your prayers from 7pm
Found this fifteen mins before you are due to start. Good going.
My wife and myself, located in Brussels, are with you all in prayer if not in fact.
I hope it went well. Reading recent news of Salman Rushdie's knighthood, this concert seems to have been ill-conceived from every possible angle.
(Tuesday 11pm)
...the suspense is obviously getting to us all; I've noticed another 500 hits this afternoon since this was posted!
"For this I was born for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth".
Fr. Tim,
Thank you for taking your courageous stand. I was praying for you at the time of your vigil outside Westminster Cathedral.
Mgr. Mark Langham’s self-justification is smug, vacuous and self-deceiving. Bandying around snippets from Conciliar documents and adding an admixture of New Labour diversity-speak just won’t do.
Catholics around the world were utterly outraged by the “Jesus is a slave of Allah” demo in the Westminster Cathedral piazza and we eagerly await an apology from Muslim leaders. Catholics are increasingly aware of a bigger picture (ignored by the secular media, but thankfully highlighted in the blogosphere) of increasing Muslim persecution of Christians in Islamic-majority countries worldwide, and the blatant trampling of basic human rights by people and governments acting in the name of Islam.
True, “the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in other religions”—as articulated in Nostra Aetate.
But Catholicism also strongly condemns everything that is false and unholy about other faiths, and it asserts the absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. This supremacy is hardly defended or articulated when those in charge of a Cathedral dedicated to His Most Precious Blood make naïve conciliatory gestures to a religion that won’t even accept His death, let alone His Resurrection.
May our Divine Lord bless your Vigil and the excellent and practical response. Do read a review of the book:Blindfold Synangogue (Milano,2002) by Prof Enrico Radaelli on his website: Aurea Domus: Gymnasium,www.enricomariaradaelli.it/aureadomus/gymnasium/gymn_trinci_introduction.html , which is mainly in Italian,but with some fine articles,including some about Roman Amerio.The Blindfold Synagogue is a critique of inter-faith theology and has\a preface by Msgr Livi,Prof.at the Lateran and a priest of Opus Dei.
Alan Robinson [rpienne@eircom.net ]
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