The Hermeneutic of Continuity

Looking at the number of photos I took in Paris, I realised that it would save a lot of time if I spent some little time setting up a Flickr account at long last. Here it is: Fr Tim Finigan's Photostream . I have uploaded some photos in various sets related to the different Churches I visited. They are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence. In other words, you can use them on your blog but you should give credit for them. I was especially pleased with some of the ones of Notre Dame , thanks to the Lord's gift of sunshine earlier today.

The Basilique du Sacre Coeur in Montmartre is one of the finest landmarks in Paris. Montmartre is so named because it is the place of martyrdom (c.250) of St Denis, Bishop of Paris and patron of France. After suffering defeat in the Franco-Prussian was of 1870-71, French society was divided and the Communard uprising in Paris led to atrocities on both sides. The Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy, was among those executed. Alexandre Legentil and Hubert Rohault de Fleury proposed the building of a Church consecrated to the Heart of Christ in reparation and for the spiritual welfare of France. Their idea was taken up by the Church in France which proposed a National Vow. The building of the Basilica was financed by donations from Catholics in parishes throughout France. It is quite a walk up to the top but there is also a funicular railway: Since 1885, there has been perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, day and night, without interruption. The Basilica is therefore reserv...

I last went to Paris when I was on holiday with my family as a teenager. Having seized the opportunity for a rare day off, I was going to go to Bruges but the Eurostar timetable prevented that so I chose Paris instead, a little reluctantly. Having spent a day and a half here, I could kick myself for not having put it on the A-list for brief R&R locations. My room is in fact " off the Boulevard St-Michel " and I am inescapably reminded of one of the more ludicrous number one hits of the 1960's: Peter Sarstedt's "Where do you go to my lovely?" as in the video above. My father found great amusement in the line "You sip your Napoleon Brandy / And you never get your lips wet / Ah no you don't". I posted a number of tweets alluding to this song yesterday but I fear that I am showing my age and that most of my followers (who were born some time after 1969) will have concluded that the seemingly inconsequential snippets were merely evidence of ...

It is Passiontide and the New Liturgical Movement has been posting pictures of Churches that have veiled their statues from the 5th Sunday of Lent or Passion Sunday, (depending on whether you are following the usus antiquior or recentior .) I was surprised that this was considered a rare practice but visiting Churches in Paris, I did not see any statues veiled. Except the one in the above photo which I visited the other day. It was a strange experience compared to visiting most Churches in France (or elsewhere in Europe.) The Church was being cleaned but there were people there praying. The notice board had plenty of the expected initiatives for catechesis, social work and devotional events. Unusually, there was no forward-facing altar, so the original plan of the Church could be seen without distraction, leading the eye to the High Altar and the tabernacle. There were plenty of side altars. Normally these are used as storage spaces or display rooms. In this Church all the altar...