The Hermeneutic of Continuity

Celebrating the Sacred Liturgy in a Benedictine house is always a little intimidating for a rough-edged secular such as myself. Everything is so perfect that I tremble in case I commit some liturgical solecism and mess things up. Sr Sacristan had all the books prepared for me and I think I managed OK. God has mercifully given me the ability to sing and provided me with good tuition in Latin so those are two obstacles removed, but I did try to pay careful attention to the rubrics of the Missal of Pope Paul VI. Above you can see a view of the beautiful choir which is seen by the celebrant. It is filled with sisters of all ages, from young postulants, novices, and simply professed, to those venerable long-standing members of the community who still give so much from their experience. Here is a photo from Vespers in the afternoon: the incensing of the altar at the Magnificat : At recreation after None, there was a gathering of all the community to celebrate Sr Claire's jubilee with son...

Olympic hopeful

Michael Hobson, one of my parishioners and the son of "Vesper", a frequent commenter, is hoping to compete in the Olympic Games in 2012. You can read an update of Michael's activities on his BBC blog where he speaks of training with Kelly Holmes, and of a charity race at his old sixth form college in aid of the Adolescents Unit at the royal Marsden Hospital, in memory of his friend Joe Allen who tragically died recently. Please say a prayer for the repose of the soul of Joe and for the success of our young athlete.

Cherie Blair to launch Sea Sunday (sigh!)

It is always a little depressing to take the ferry and train back from the beautiful Isle of Wight to the mainland and then on to The Smoke. Mulier Fortis picked me up from the station and filled me in with some of the blogging news I had missed over the past couple of days. Particularly irritating was the news that Cherie Blair was fronting the launch of this year's Sea Sunday appeal . The Apostleship of the Sea is a worthy Catholic charity, providing for seafarers who are away from home for long periods. It is therefore sad to see the choice of celebrity for the launch of their appeal. Cherie Blair, along with her husband, openly dissents from the teaching of the Catholic Church and I agree with John Smeaton that she is not a suitable person to be invited to launch a Catholic charity appeal. I rather fear that this publicity stunt will do more good for Cherie Blair than for the Apostleship of the Sea. (See British Horrors , this article and this article and some quotes .)

Glorious morning on the Isle of Wight

This morning I celebrated Mass of the Vigil of St John the Baptist for the Isle of Wight Latin Mass Society at St Mary's, Ryde. Fr Glaysher, the Parish Priest, has taken great care of the Church and supplied vestments from his own collection. After Mass, a few people from the quite substantial congregation repaired to a local coffee shop, Included among them was Phil of Ponte Sisto (second from the left): The IOWLMS is rather spoilt this week with Low Mass Sunday and today, as well as the lovely usus recentior Mass at St Cecilia's yesterday. Tomorrow, Fr Matthew Goddard FSSP will be celebrating the first Solemn High Mass on the Island for many years. Fr Goddard was recently ordained; I have sadly missed the various celebrations but wish him well from a distance. Before taking the ferry back to the mainland, I had lunch with Fr Glaysher ( right ) and Fr Roy ( left ), a member of the Anglican Society of the Holy Cross . It was a glorious day to take lunch overlooking the Solent...

Day at St Cecilia's

June 22, 2009

At St Cecilia's Abbey in Ryde, Isle of Wight, today, there was the celebration of Sr Claire's silver jubilee of profession. I was celebrant at Mass (Latin, newer form) chanted beautifully by the sisters for the feast of Sts John Fisher and Thomas More with Mass VI and all the chants from the Graduale Romanum . Sister's family were there except for her father who is ill at home. He was able to listen to the celebration via a telephone linkup. After Mass, the large parlour was open at various times during the day until Vespers and Benediction. After None, the sisters and the family took it in turns to sing songs and play various musical instruments at an extended recreation. It was great to be able to meet many of the sisters whom I have seen over the years in choir during various visits as well as recent newcomers to this thriving contemplative community. Some readers from the Netherlands will perhaps recognise the young lady in the centre of the photo above dressed in blue,...

Bishop Moran celebrates Mass at Papa Stronsay

June 20, 2009

It is great to see pictures of the visit of Rt Rev Peter Moran, Bishop of Aberdeen, celebrating Mass during a visit to the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer on the island of Papa Stronsay. His Lordship kindly celebrated Mass in the usus antiquior for the community. Yesterday, several of the community were at St Peter's for solemn Vespers celebrated by Pope Benedict to begin the Year of the Priest.

Worldwide Twitter campaign for vocations

June 20, 2009

The Archbishop of Utrecht, Willem Jacobus Eijk, is on Twitter and, with the assistance of one of his priests, Fr Roderick , has launched the Worldwide Twitter campaign for vocations . If you wish to participate, the simple instructions are: 1 - Choose a day and pray specifically for future priests (they have a link for 140 character prayers in several languages ). 2 - Post a Tweet that you are praying for vocations and invite your Twitter followers to do the same. Use #futurepriests in your Tweet so we can assemble all messages related to the campaign on this website. the "#futurepriests" thing is to add a tag to all the posts so that they can be assembled. Sadly, but not surprisingly, some people have posted silly or nasty messages using the tag so if you are on Twitter go over and post sensible and prayerful messages. (They'll get tired soon enough.) Take a look also at the dedicated portal set up by the Congregation for the Clergy, Annus Sacerdotalis .

Pope Benedict on Year for Priests

June 20, 2009

Over the past few days, there have been two excellent pieces by Pope Benedict on the Year for Priests. First of all, his Letter Proclaiming the Year of Priests on the 150th anniversary of the death of the Curé of Ars, St John Vianney. In this letter, the Holy Father thanks God for good priests, touchingly recalls the example of the priest alongside whom he ministered as a young priest, and frankly acknowledges those "situations which can never be sufficiently deplored" where priests have given scandal. After this, he points to the Curé of Ars as the point of reference for us all, quoting some of the purple passages from the writings of the saintly priest. He admits that they "might seem excessive" but that they "they reveal the high esteem in which he held the sacrament of the priesthood". Then yesterday at second Vespers for the feast of the Sacred Heart, the Holy Father also spoke of the priesthood. Rorate Caeli has translated one significant passage: ...

Catholic Church discriminates against witches

June 19, 2009

A story doing he rounds over the last day or so is the complaint by a coven of witches against the Church for persecuting them by not allowing them to use a Catholic Church Hall for their annual "Witches Ball". (See: Witches' coven claims religious persecution after church hall ban ) Sandra Davis, the "high priestess" of Crystal Cauldron group in Stockport, said: "I thought we had made progress, that we could accept other people's religious paths." Well I suppose this brings up a thorny question about the whole religious dialogue business. If you look up the website of The Crystal Cauldron , much of what they say is pretty tame - they are fairly liberal witches in a way. They want to harm nobody, refrain from speaking ill of others, release the inner energy, be kind to all creatures and live in harmony with nature. (They even have a children's group called "Little Crystals".) They do believe in the "polarity of the deity", i...

Fr Fawsett's funeral

June 19, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Fr Fawssett who had just died. Today, his funeral was celebrated in the chapel of the John Fisher School in Purley where he celebrated Mass daily for so many years. It was in that chapel that my own vocation was nurtured and I always love to go back there. Today it was packed, with a good number of old boys on the sanctuary, including Bishop Howard Tripp who celebrated the Mass. Afterwards, the school put on a reception in the Hall where the "Honours" boards have the customary sporting records, even a few international honours. One board that is not in every school is the list of old boys of the school who have been ordained priest. One young man who is entering the seminary this autumn told me that Fr Fawssett asked him what he was doing and lit up when he heard that he was entering the seminary. It was a fitting way to celebrate the beginning of the "Year of the Priest" which was mentioned several times during the Mass in fitt...

Launch of "A Pure Heart Create for Me"

"A Pure Heart Create for Me", published by Family Publications is a collection of articles, mainly based on lectures given last year at St Patrick's Soho Square to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae . Authors include Fr Stephen Langridge ( Southwark Vocations ), Fr Richard Aladics ( Friends with Christ ), and Nicole Parker of the Central London Fertility Care Centre and myself (on Humanae Vitae as a challenge to the culture). Tonight saw the launch of the book at St Patrick's. Fr Anthony Doe spoke of how the eternal Word's divesting himself of glory in the incarnation and the crucifixion, was the model for human love and its fruitfulness. Fr Philip Egan spoke of the authority of the encyclical in a tightly argued talk that concluded that the teaching was proclaimed infallibly by the ordinary magisterium. (Fr Philip Egan's has recently written a book called "Philosophy and Catholic Theology: A Primer." (See Amazon link below.) It wa...

St Bede's Corpus Christi Procession 28 June

The parish of St Bede's, Clapham Park , will be holding their Blessed Sacrament on Sunday 28 June, beginning at 3pm. If you are in the area, I do recommend that you go along. The procession is sure to be a reverent and well-conducted act of faith in the Blessed Sacrament.

Rose Korzeniewski RIP

Please say a prayer for Rose Korzeniewski, the mother of Diane at Te Deum Laudamus , who died yesterday evening, fortified by the rites of Holy Mother Church. Requiescat in pace . (Thanks to Mary B, a correspondent with Diane, for the graphic.)

Free Chen Guangcheng!

In December 2006, I wrote about Chen Guangcheng when the Jubilee Campaign organised postcards to be sent to the Chinese Ambassador. He had been imprisoned on 24 August 2006 after exposing and speaking out against the policy of forced abortions and sterilisations in the Shandong Province. Sadly he is still in prison. A petition has been organised to ask the Prime Minister to put pressure on the Chinese authorities to free Chen Guangcheng. The petition reads: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to take whatever action he can to put pressure on the Chinese authorities to secure the release of Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese prisoner of conscience who, on 20th May 2009 has served 1000 days in prison since being sentanced for highligting abuses of the one-child policy of the Chinese authorities, including forced abortions and sterilisations Further information from petition creator: Chen Guangcheng is a blind lawyer, currently imprisoned in China for "damaging public property ...

Via Twitter

A few days ago, I googled something along the lines of "what use is twitter" and found, as I thought, that it is one of those things that seem a bit pointless but have unexpected power - rather like email, really, as I remember explaining to a senior ecclesiastic some years ago. So I made up my mind to get myself on Twitter as soon as I had a spare moment. Then the last night, I was looking through my site meter "incoming"; the enhanced version has a useful page of referring web pages ranked by visits and every so often have a quick glance over the first three pages. It takes very little time and often brings up interesting links. For the first time, there was a Twitter link on the first page: Gillibrand's , in fact (he of the blog Catholic Church Conservation which some days can be labelled almost in its entirety as "laugh or cry"). It was there that I found the now famous "doner kebab" eucharist. Gillibrand had put up a tweet about my post...

"Test of Faith" film

There is an interesting new film shortly to be released by the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion based at St Edmund's College at Cambridge. Called Test of Faith , the film is introduced by the makers as follows: The relationship between science and faith is often represented as a battleground. The claim is that science has pushed God into the margins. But is the truth more complex? Talking to leading scientist-believers, we probe the issues at the heart of this debate. Has science really murdered God? Or is the God question being redefined in new ways by science? Does the possibility of a Creator remain an ineradicable challenge? With Alistair McGrath, Francis Collins and John Polkinghorne among others, it should be well worth watching. You can see a trailer at the Test of Faith website.

"Is it possible to live this way?" volume 2

The UK Launch of the book "Is it possible to live this way? An Unusual Approach to Christian Existence. Vol. 2 Hope" by Luigi Giussani will be held on Thursday 2 July at 7.30 pm at Westminster Cathedral Hall. Speakers will be Fr. Julian Carron - President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, and Mgr. Mark O’Toole - Rector of the Seminary of the Diocese of Westminster. See also the Communion and Liberation website . Description of the book by CL: The book is a compilation of Luigi Giussani’s conversations with people following the path of consecrated life in the Catholic Church . As in all his works, Giussani encourages individuals to be serious about their own existence and faithful to their experience. The conversations reported here are fascinating and insightful, providing support for a way of life that today is frequently questioned, rejected, or censured.The text reflects on the “evangelical counsels” of poverty, chastity and obedience, proposing an unusual yet...

Life and Liberty Petition

Christian Concern for our Nation have organised a petition to the Prime Minister regarding the Coroners and Justice Bill: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Abandon the Government's opposition to the free speech protection clause in the Coroners and Justice Bill. Preserving the sanctity of life and freedom of speech are vitally important to the preservation of liberty and good governance under the rule of law in the United Kingdom. These are under immediate threat by measures in the Coroners and Justice Bill. We the undersigned, therefore, petition HM the Queen, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House of Lords to: 1. Protect the value of human life in the UK by opposing proposed amendments authorizing state-sanctioned assisted suicide; and 2. Protect freedom of speech by abandoning its opposition to the free speech protection clause currently within the sexual orientation hatred offence which preserves the right to, discuss, criticise and urge to refrain fro...

Congratulations to Fr Thomas Regan