The Hermeneutic of Continuity

NLM has published the text of a  letter written by Cardinal Ranjith  to the General Assembly of the International Federation Una Voce in which His Eminence invites us to encourage the return of the older form of the Roman Rite as a part of the renewal of the Church desired by the Fathers of Vatican II: Liturgy for this reason can never be what man creates. For if we worship the way we want and fix the rules ourselves, then we run the risk of recreating Aaron's golden calf. We ought to constantly insist on worship as participation in what God Himself does, else we run the risk of engaging in idolatry. Liturgical symbolism helps us to rise above what is human to what is divine. In this, it is my firm conviction that the Vetus Ordo represents to a great extent and in the most fulfilling way that mystical and transcendent call to an encounter with God in the liturgy. Hence the time has come for us to not only renew through radical changes the content of the new Liturgy, but...

At a restaurant I visited recently, the above card was on the table. I was amused by the advice to "Enjoy Alcohol Responsibly" after the offer of an extra free bottle of wine if you purchase four.

Perhaps readers may be able to help with this query from Hughie in the combox of my previous post : I understand that in view of the concerns expressed by the Council Fathers, Pope Paul VI set up a commission of three cardinals to examine the question of whether the particular Churches should be allowed to communicate with the dicasteries of the Roman Curia in languages other than Latin. It is my understanding that Scotland’s William Theodore Cardinal Heard was one of the three. I believe that Cardinal Roberti MAY have been one of the others. The problem is, I have never been able to locate anything about the report of the commission or anything about what Pope Paul VI decided, although it is obvious that they recommended, and the Pope accepted, that it was unreasonable/unadvisable (sic) to insist on the local Churches communicating in Latin.  I wondered if, bearing in mind your expertise in the Latin, you knew anything about this. I am afraid that I don't know anything ab...

Blessed Pope John XXIII, in the Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientia  of 1962, strongly mandated the study and use of Latin in ecclesiastical studies, theology, the Liturgy, and as a prerequisite for priestly formation. This February, there is to be an International Convention  in Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of Veterum Sapientia . I can't help thinking that after 50 years we are perhaps finally prepared to take the document of the Blessed Pope seriously. Here is one passage from the standard translation that you can find in various places on the internet: Of its very nature Latin is most suitable for promoting every form of culture among peoples. It gives rise to no jealousies. It does not favor any one nation, but presents itself with equal impartiality to all and is equally acceptable to all. And here is the  Latin original : Suae enim sponte naturae lingua Latina ad provehendum apud populos quoslibet omnem humanitatis cultum est peraccommodata: cum...

Happy Christmas to all of you. Thank you for your witness to the faith, thank you for making the world a better place by raising your families, by being priests, by living the evangelical counsels, by being an apostolic single people in the world, and by all the other things that you do for the glory of God. And thank you for reading my blog. May God bless you and all your loved ones on this glorious feast.

Youth Defence , the upbeat Irish pro-life group, produced this video to help promote the pro-life message for Christmas. In recent years we have come to know more than our forbears about the process of life in the womb; it is right that we apply this to the growth of Jesus Christ from a single-celled embryo. Remember that after Our Lady conceived Our Lord in her womb, she went with haste to the hill country of Judea to visit St Elizabeth who asked why she should be honoured with a visit from the mother of her Lord. The twenty-four week foetus, St John the Baptist leapt in the womb in recognition of Christ. Both of them recognised their Saviour when he was perhaps a five day old embryo.

 In 2006 , 2009 and earlier this year I posted on the courageous blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng who exposed and spoke out against the policy of forced abortion and sterilisation in the Shandong Province in China. Thanks to Batman star Christian Bale, his case has been given worldwide publicity via  CNN . LifeSite News has the story; it was also reported in the Daily Telegraph , the Sun , and many other news outlets throughout the world; though both the Telegraph and the Sun fail to mention just exactly what human rights Chen was campaigning for - namely the right of women not to be subject to forced sterilisation and the right of women and babies not to be subjected to the process of forced abortion. John Smeaton has highlighted a campaign which originated as a gesture of support for Chen on his 40th birthday on 12 November - but I'm sure further contributions would be welcome (they do say that the campaign will only end when Chen is free.) Chen is blind and the ...

Just picked up from the feed of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy that there are meetings for the Western Chapter on 23 January and 6 March, and there is a meeting for the Southern Chapter at St Patrick's, Soho Square on Thursday 9 February. Details at the CCC website . I should be able to make the February meeting in London so look forward to seeing some confreres there.

In his book "The Stripping of the Altars", Eamonn Duffy tells of how the priest would quiz parishioners at their Easter shriving on whether they had carried out the works of mercy. One of those works is to visit people in prison. The other day, our Holy Father did this, going to see the prisoners at Rebbibia in Rome. He did a Q&A session in which one exchange went: Q. My name is Federico. ... What can sick and HIV-positive prisoners ask of the Pope? ... We are barely mentioned, but, when we are, in aggressive terms, as if seeking to have us eliminated from society. This makes us feel subhuman. A. "We have to endure the fact that people speak about us 'aggressively'. They also speak 'aggressively' about the Pope, yet nonetheless we move on. I think it is important to encourage everyone to think positively, to understand your sufferings, to understand the need to help you rise again. I will do my part, inviting everyone to think in the right way, ...

For a couple of years, we were the only place in England to have solemn High Mass at midnight for Christmas. Now, I think there are one or two others but it is still quite a rarity. So if you want to join us, you would be most welcome. The Church is open from 11pm, there are some carols before Mass, blessing of the crib and Mass at midnight. We also have 9am and 10.30am masses sung in English with the tones given in the new (corrected) translation of the Missal. For New Year's Eve, we have adoration of the Blessed Sacrament from 11pm, with the Te Deum and Benediction at midnight (accompanied by fireworks, set off by our neighbours.) You can see the full list of our Christmas and New Year services at the parish website .

St John's Seminary at Wonersh was in festive mood today as Rev Oladele Craig and Rev Kurt Barragan were ordained as Deacons. God willing, they will be ordained to the sacred priesthood this coming summer. The celebration of the Liturgy was dignified and reverent, co-ordinated with discreet expertise by the Seminary MC, Simon Dray. The music was unmistakeably sacred music: the Missa Orbis Factor was used for the ordinary, and the English chants for Mass drew on both Eastern and Western traditions. The Schola gave a fine rendition of Tallis's If ye love me . An impressive number of clergy from the diocese participated, so it was a good opportunity to catch up with friends afterwards over lunch.  The ordinati both went through my Sacramental Theology class last academic year. I am beginning to wonder whether it is a kind of hurdle before ordination (i.e. if you can survive that, you can survive anything!) Here is a photo of myself with Rev Oladele Craig:   And her...

We learnt yesterday that Christopher Hitchens has died. Our Catholic response is in charity to pray for the repose of his soul. We believe that he has gone to meet his maker. He did not believe in Christianity or in religion in general. We are not to judge him; we may allow that he was not culpable for his lack of faith. Only God can judge him, and we believe that God is infinitely merciful. Therefore we pray that the Father will allow him to be purified and to enter the kingdom of heaven - perhaps after a few sessions with St Thomas Aquinas and Blessed Teresa of Calcutta who will show him the love that they had for the truth. Requiescat in pace.

Recently I wondered whether it was now open season on Bishop Davies since he had been publicly criticised by a fellow Bishop and by a Heythrop theologian because of his remarks in a pastoral sermon to young people. One of the objections pointed to the cultural obstacles in the way of young Catholics today. This was described as a persecution complex. After reading the homily of Bishop Davies, I found a report of a homily from Archbishop Mennini, delivered at Stonyhurst a few days earlier, on the feast of St Edmund Campion. (See Professing the Faith in our Country is not likely to become easier – UK Papal Nuncio .) In the course of his excellent homily, which demonstrated a familiarity with, and admiration of, the life of St Edmund Campion, he said: We do well to reflect on the call to fidelity and constancy exemplified by Saint Edmund Campion and the many martyrs of England and Wales, and as we give thanks, we cannot fail to realise too, that professing the Faith in our Country...

Many thanks to FM who kindly sent me the Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire from my Amazon Wishlist. I shall enjoy reading it.

Hilarious. Some quotes: "Everything is moving towards cat videos; and the agencies that don't realise that - get left behind." "Cat videos are an unbelievably effective new business tool." "Our goal is to integrate cat videos into every stage of the customer experience." H/T Orwell's Picnic

[ Photo credit:  Mulier Fortis ] I was intending to record the responses for Low Mass to help out altar boys who wish to learn them. Thankfully, this has already been done (thanks to Fr Zuhlsdorf for the link.) This recording was made in the 1950s by the Catholic University in Washington D.C. It was originally made for an LP record. The introduction in the sound file is good and boys would do well to listen to it. They may then wish simply to go back to the prayers at the foot of the altar to learn them thoroughly. The prayers of the Mass begin at about three minutes in. The other more difficult response which boys may need to listen to several times is the Suscipiat . This can be found at 09.22. To download a copy of the file for your mp3 player, iPod, smartphone or other device, go to the Internet Archive page or simply right-click on this link and choose "save link as" or "save target as", depending on your browser. (You will need to...

Bishop Gilbert of Aberdeen recently devoted a  Pastoral Letter  to the theme of silence. Quoting Kierkegaard, he began by explaining why silence is important, and then moved on to offer some practical advice: A wise elderly priest of the diocese said recently, ‘Two people talking stop forty people praying.’ ‘Create silence!’ I don’t want to be misunderstood. We all understand about babies. Nor are we meant to come and go from church as cold isolated individuals, uninterested in one another. We want our parishes to be warm and welcoming places. We want to meet and greet and speak with one another. There are arrangements to be made, items of news to be shared, messages to be passed. A good word is above the best gift, says the Bible. But it is a question of where and when. Better in the porch than at the back of the church. Better after the Mass in a hall or a room. There is a time and place for speaking and a time and place for silence. In the church itself, so far as pos...

Sky news has a story about a lady going to the Dignitas "clinic" (for the reason for the inverted commas, see here .) She complains that politicians denied her the dignity of ending her life in her own home. There is a token balancing element in the story with CNK saying rightly that vulnerable people could feel obliged to die if they feel that they are a burden on others. There is a poll on the page  which is currently strongly in favour of assisted suicide. I encourage you to go and cast your vote:

A couple of weeks ago, Bishop Mark Davies preached at a Diocesan Day of Recollection for young people in his diocese of Shrewsbury. He spoke about being distracted and not finding our way, about being diverted from the Lord because we are looking in the wrong direction. He said that ... a generation before you so often failed to pass on those directions, the fullness of our Catholic faith which in Isaiah’s words at every crucial turn of our lives tells us, “this is the way, follow it!” Bishop Davies went on to meditate on the meaning of Sunday and the real presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist, and offered encouragement to Youth 2000. He quoted the words of Pope Benedict at Marienfeld in for the 2005 World Youth Day: ...do not be deterred from taking part in Sunday Mass, and help others to discover it too … Let us pledge ourselves to do this – it is worth the effort!” Then Bishop Davies continued: For never since the days of persecution have so many obstacles been put in fro...

A couple of weeks back, I posted the important news of Jet Pack Man flying alongside two jets and suggested that street-friendly jet packs could not be far off. A kindly commenter pointed me to the The Martin Jetpack ("Fly the Dream") from New Zealand which is near to commercial production. I have added this to my new (mainly fanciful) Amazon Wishlist .

The Beautiful Story of Mary is the latest in a lovely collection of books for children from the Catholic Truth Society. As with several others, it is written and illustrated by Maïte Roche. They are suitable for a mother or father to read to a young child, with lively pictures that would, I think, be attractive to the little ones. Also by Maïte Roche are My Little Christmas Prayer Book and The Beautiful Story of the Bible . A really good book for children who are preparing for their first Holy Communion is Friendship with Jesus , which gives the English translation of the question and answer session which Pope Benedict held with children in 2005 (edited by Amy Welborn and illustrated by Ann Kissane Engelhart.) If you have young nephews or nieces and want to get them a little present for Christmas, the CTS has some good things for your shopping list.

I'm not particularly a dog lover. In fact, I don't like dogs very much; I prefer cats but don't go in for cat posts. Nevertheless, this is too bizarre not to post. In the words of Jennifer (of the "favourite links"): "In case you were looking for a video of a dog in a tutu dancing the merengue... Here you go ."

Laodicea has the quick and easy instructions for responding to the Scottish same-sex marriage consultation. If you haven't time to follow the link, just go to the Christian Institute and fill in the blanks. Five minutes - but must be done by midnight tonight.

... is that he is too closely aligned with Rome on the question of same-sex unions, according to an Italian newspaper. Two articles concerning this theme were posted yesterday on the website of  La Stampa . The first, entitled  Storm on the Thames: No same-sex unions in churches , says that Archbishop Nichols has been attacked for his excessive alignment with Rome on the question of same sex unions. It describes Archbishop Nichols as a “bona fide Ratzingerian.” The second article (for which there is not yet an English translation – but you can use google translate) is headed  L'arcivescovo di Westminster su unioni gay accusato di non rispettare la posizione vaticana (i.e. "The Archbishop of Westminster on gay unions accused of not respecting the Vatican position.") This article links to David Kerr’s piece on CNA giving Archbishop Nichols’ response to his critics and refers to William Oddie’s article in the Catholic Herald ( here ) and to the follow-up a...

Photo credit: Amos T Fairchild Father Michael Kennedy of the Diocese of Wagga Wagga in Australia, has been appointed as Bishop of the Diocese of Armidale. For some years, Fr Kennedy was the Chairman of the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. He succeeds Bishop Luc Matthys whom I met at the Confraternity meeting in Rome in January 2010 which he attended. I expect that there will be some very happy priests and people in the Diocese of Armidale.

Recently, Ben Trovato, the ( Countercultural Father ) wrote to the Head of RE at the non-Catholic secondary school which his children attend. He had followed the case of Bonus Pastor School with interest only to find out one day that his own son had been watching Keeping Mum in RE . The Head of RE phoned up promptly after receiving the letter, to say that he would look into the matter. A few weeks later, Ben received a letter from the teacher to say that he had reviewed the film, agreed it was inappropriate and withdrawn it from the syllabus. It would be unjust to avoid making the observation that Ben's treatment by the non-Catholic school is markedly different from the response that the Clovis family received from a Catholic School.

The latest sensation on the Catholic blogosphere is the rapidly expanding collection of trad Catholic protest songs by Laurence England ( That the Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill .) At Blackfen we were delighted to welcome Laurence last Saturday for a gig (see his report ) in between the Missa Cantata and solemn Vespers. After a late breakfast of sausages, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans and fried bread, accompanied by a pint or twain of Late Red, the company were treated to various compositions, including a premiere of Pyjamahadeen , a derogatory term, recently applied to traddy Catholic bloggers, which Laurence had fun with. Editing the video, I added effects to give a retro look with scratches. Lyrics for the song are supplied in the info box at the YouTube page for the video. Mulier Fortis has Ecclesia Dei and I referred before to Summorum Pontificum which was the finale song on Saturday. Derogatory expressions can be fun if you take them in the right spiri...

The other day, my students asked where they could obtain the book by Bishop Athanasius Schneider "It is the Lord." Mistakenly I said that it was available from the Libreria Editrice Vaticana via PaxBooks (that's the version in Italian which I bought first of all.) In fact the English translation is sold in England by Gracewing for £5.99. Since I won't be lecturing again until after Christmas, I thought that I would put the information here. If you have not read this book, I do heartily recommend it. I mentioned the It is the Lord after referring to Origen, St Ephraem and St Cyril of Jerusalem who all emphasised strongly the reverence that is due to the holy Eucharist, and particularly the presence of Christ in each fragment. Here, for example, is a passage from St Ephraem, a fourth century Syriac Father: I have given this to you now lest you should think it to be bread, take, eat this bread and do not crumble the particles of it; what I have called my body,...

Fr Robert Barron has developed a highly successful internet apostolate with his talks available on YouTube. Catholicism is a professionally produced DVD series exploring the Catholic faith. The Centre for Catholic Formation in the Archdiocese of Southwark is putting on this programme, starting in January. This programme would be especially suited to catechists (or those who want to become catechists) and teachers who would like the opportunity to deepen their faith. Here are the details from the CCF: New Adult Formation Programme: Catholicism You are warmly invited to a new adult study programme based on the highly-acclaimed DVD series by Fr Robert Barron, Catholicism, at the Centre for Catholic Formation in Tooting on Thursday evenings, beginning 12th January (Northern Line - Tooting Bec). A trailer for the series is shown above. It is a beautifully produced series and has been called "the most vivid catechism ever created" (Brad Milner, The Catholic Thing blog). Ca...

... but the agents of the culture of death are cross that it doesn't work properly for finding abortion mills. Siri - a popular feature of the new iPhone 4S is a voice-activated, electronic personal assistant designed to 'help you do the things you do every day.' Things people do every day:  have a chinese meal, go to the library, get an abortion, you know the sort of thing. Siri has annoyed the pro-aborts by not instantly serving up information about where to get your baby done away with. One feminist was particularly annoyed that she got directed to a pro-life crisis centre in Washington. I wonder whether the spirit of the late, great Cardinal of Genoa is having an influence on the app. Has anyone tried to use it to search for a place to buy trousers for women? (Cf. his 1960 Notification Concerning Men's Dress Worn By Women .)