Oxford Pro-Life Witness

Saturday 26 January 3-4pm. This is a monthly pro-life vigil to pray for all babies and families affected by abortion, and to pray for the doctors and nurses involved.

Meet outside St Anthony of Padua Church in Headley Way, opposite the John Radcliffe Hospital. (The JR is the only place in Oxford where abortions take place.)

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First Sunday with the real translation

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For about two-thirds of my life, ever since the introduction of the old ICEL translation, I have argued and written that we should have an accurate translation of the Missal for Mass in English. This morning for the first time, I was able to celebrate Mass in English at which we used a decent translation of the Gloria , the Creed, and the Domine non sum dignus . Although I have joined others in looking forward to this development and defending it, nevertheless, I was rather moved to be able to use it fully for the first time. All my priestly life, I have had to celebrate English Mass with a dumbed-down, lame duck translation. Of course, many people have been sanctified by their participation in the Mass using this translation but if you have even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin, it is frustrating to know that the people are being denied the richness of the Church's sacred texts. For most ordinary people not involved in ecclesiastical politics, there will be no problems. In a...
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The blessing of a chariot

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When I studied Latin in Rome with Fr Reginald Foster, he used to suggest that a good word for a car was autorhaeda , a word in fact used in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis of 1965 when speaking of a visit made by Pope Paul VI to the Basilica of St Chrysogonus in Trastevere. The word raeda (without the "h") was used by Caesar, Cicero and Horace for a travelling wagon with four wheels and the addition of "auto" does not make for too awful a neologism. In the Rituale Romanum , the blessing for a motor vehicle is the Benedictio vehiculi seu currus . The word currus is normally translated as chariot and reflects the way that people often view their car. Since one's motor vehicle is more likely to be the locus of one's death or injury than many other artefacts, it does make sense to have it blessed. Above you can see us striding purposefully past the Georgian houses of Victoria Road and here is the blessing of the classic mini: The blessing given in the ...
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Hippolytus and Eucharistic Prayer II

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When I was a student in Rome, I remember going with a priest for Mass in one of the ancient Churches. The priest said that he was going to use Eucharistic Prayer II because it was the most ancient of all the prayers and was specifically Roman, composed by Hippolytus. This was the standard view at that time (early 1980s) but has since been called into question. A number of people have recently mentioned the matter to me and so here are a few notes for you. In the 19th century, a number of ancient texts were discovered that were similar to the "Apostolic Constitutions", (of which the first modern edition was published in 1563). Among these texts was a document which came to be referred to as the “Egyptian Church Order”. In addition, the Canons of Hippolytus and the Testamentum Domini were discovered. The scholarly consensus in the early 20th century on the dependence of these documents was that the “Egyptian Church Order” was in fact the "Apostolic Tradition" of Hipp...
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Saint Agatha - a saint for today

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St Agatha, from Catania in Sicily, was martyred in 251 during the brief but ferocious persecution of Decius. At that time, everyone was ordered to sacrifice to the Roman gods by a certain day determined by the local authorities. When you had done so, you got a certificate (a libellus ). Some Christians were able to bribe an official or knew someone who could get a libellus – they were referred to as libellatici and were considered as having betrayed the faith; though not as seriously as those who had offered sacrifice to the Roman gods. St Agatha’s martyrdom is a classic example of the combination of two virtues, chastity and fortitude even in the face of torture and death. The Virgin Martyrs are sometimes despised in the world today by those who are particularly outraged by chastity and the readiness to quit this earthly life for heaven. St Agatha’s passion began when she rejected the amorous advances of a prefect Quintianus. He gave her to Aphrodisia, the keeper of a brothel wh...
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Text of the new ICEL translation

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