Bangor to Bobbio blog

Fr Sean Coyle, a member of the Missionary Society of St Columban, has started a new blog called Bangor to Bobbio. Fr Coyle is editor of Misyon and writes with down-to-earth experience of the mission of the Church.

Popular posts from this blog

1962 Missal pdf online

The Church Music Association of America and Jeffrey Tucker of the New Liturgical Movement have made available the 1962 Missal online in pdf format (72Mb). The file is hosted at Musica Sacra , the website of the CMAA, thanks to a generous gift from Fr Robert Skeris While you are at it, take a look at the articles clarifying the rules for music at Low Mass and music at High Mass .
Read more

Enjoying the Feast of the Holy Trinity

Image
The weather in London today finally broke into just above 20 degrees centigrade, or just tipping 70 if you are using old money. It was a beautiful day to celebrate the feast of the Most Holy Trinity. This weekend and last, I have been helping at St Bede’s, Clapham Park. In a most pastorally sensitive swap, the late Archbishop Smith allowed Fr Basden to move from Clapham Park to Ramsgate, and Fr Holden to move from there to Clapham Park. Thus, continuity was secured for both parishes. The parish choir at St Bede’s has been going from strength to strength. On several recent visits I have heard them sing polyphonic masses with aplomb. Today we had Victoria’s Missa O Quam Gloriosum .  As is the way with many traditional Masses in parishes, the older servers have had children who are now competently taking over. More than one young teenager that has served me as MC has asked his parents for a vintage copy of Fortescue for his birthd
Read more

On the Attempted Cancellation of Father Zuhlsdorf

Image
Since the US election, Fr Zuhlsdorf has been subjected to a concerted attack from some liberal catholic publications. This would not be noteworthy except for the fact that as a result, he has been asked to move from the diocese where he currently works and has now to find accommodation. It is therefore reasonable to speak of an attempt to “cancel” him as the saying is nowadays. The Character of Fr Z’s Blog As an outspoken blogger, Fr Z is accustomed to opposition from Catholics who object to his promotion of the traditional Latin Mass, gays who object to his unequivocal defence of Catholic moral teaching, and modernist priests and theologians whose theology he criticises for being contrary to the magisterial teaching of the Church. In the online “wild west” of the blogosphere, he is happy to give as good as he gets. This makes his blog enjoyable for his followers and probably annoying for his opponents. At the same time, of
Read more

Sermon for the feast of St Philip Neri

Image
Some people asked me for the text of the sermon that I preached at the Birmingham Oratory for the feast of St Philip Neri so here it is: St Philip, a saint for saints My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and be glad. (Psalm 33.2) Fr Bowden in his Miniature Lives of the Saints says that the life of St Bernadine was St Philip’s favourite among the saints and the last he read before his death. Fr Bouyer on the other hand says that the last book he had read to him was the Fathers of the Desert. Perhaps we should make a distinction between reading or being read to; or perhaps St Philip inspired the two fathers with different information as a joke. We can understand why St Philip loved St Bernadine when we think of the great gatherings of feuding renaissance factions listening to his sermons and then ending with an emotional reconciliation with the bacio di pace . The holy Franciscan’s withering attacks on homosexual vice would also have met with approval surely from
Read more

Abstinence and Friday of the Easter Octave

Image
Must we abstain from meat on the Friday of the Easter Octave? In my "Catholic Dilemmas" column in the Catholic Herald of 29 March 2013, I said that we should. This has created a larger correspondence than any other of the columns that I have written in the past six years. So I thought I should address the question further here. First of all the law concerning abstinence. The relevant canon of the current Code of Canon Law says: Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday... (Can. 1251) So the question is whether the Friday of the Easter Octave is a solemnity. In the 1969 document Calendarium Romanum , we read the following in the Normae Universales de Anno Liturgico et de Calendario : Octo primi dies temporis paschalis constituunt octavam Paschae et uti sollemnitates Domini celebrantur. (n.24) (The first eight days of paschal time constitute t
Read more