Yesterday afternoon, the Latin Mass Society held its annual Requiem Mass. Fr Conlon was celebrant, I was deacon and Fr Hayward was subdeacon. The Cathedral choir's rendition of the familiar chants filled the Cathedral with a sense of the numinous as we prayed for the holy souls.I was particularly pleased that five of the servers were from my own parish (thurifer, acolytes, holy water bearer, and second MC). Mass was preceded by the laying of a wreath on at the grave of Cardinal Heenan who, in 1971, obtained the indult from Pope Paul VI to allow the older form of the Mass in England and Wales. The petition requesting this was signed by, among others, Agatha Christia, Graham Greene, Rober Graves, F R Leavis, Yehudi Menuin, and Iris Murdoch. At the Latin Mass Society website, you can read an interesting "Recollection of the 1971 Indult" by Alfred Marnau whom I knew when I was a young student at Oxford.
Of course, Pope Benedict has now said that the usus antiquior "was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted." How times change!
Many thanks to Mac (Mulier Fortis) for taking my camera and getting some photographs of the Mass.
Lavabo:
Ecce agnus Dei:
Procession to the catafalque:
Procession to the sacristy:
5 comments:
Yes, this is a legacy from the pre-SP days, I think. Over the next few years, we should see a gradual return to the usus antiquior being celebrated at the proper time.
(I should say, too, that yesterday there was a priestly ordination in the Cathedral in the morning.)
Thank you, Father, and Mac, for the photos. Isn't Westminster Cathedral a wonderful place. And the sound of it's choir !
I think we should be ever grateful to Cardinal Heenan for obtaining, in the dark days, the so called "Agatha Christie" indult for England & Wales.
And now, of course, we have moved on from the era of the "indult Mass". Numquam abrogata. And that, as they say, is that !
Even so, the Catholic revival (unstoppable now, I think,) will take much prayer, much effort, and possibly many years yet.
Nevertheless, all will be well, one day.
Sorry - the comment to which that was a reply seems to have been lost. It was someone asking why many EF Masses are in the afternoon rather than in the morning when one would have the opportunity reasonably to keep the midnight fast.
Dear Father, please feel free to delete this once you have read it. The text of a lecture you gave at the Merton College training event has appeared on the LMS website, but something has gone wrong with the text, every time quotation marks should appear some letters are there instead. Have a look. I hope you don't mind me bringing this to your attention, if you have not spotted it already. BTW I am very supportive of the LMS and their work and indeed your great efforts. God bless you and keep you. BTW2 that pic of you on the bicycle is tops!!!
Thank you for alerting me. this is a standard problem when a Word document is pasted in as html - the "smart quotes" do not come out properly and need to be replaced with "inch marks" for the web (or indeed the correct codes).
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