The Hermeneutic of Continuity

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Showing posts with the label Tablet

Self-mortification

July 15, 2010

LMS Chairman Joseph Shaw reports on an Exchange with the Tablet concerning the age of those who attend old rite Masses. In the post, he has some fine photos of the Chartres Pilgrimage, including the one above. In the course of his post, he says, as an aside: Still, we don't read The Tablet for logic. We read it for self-mortification. I must say that I admire Joe's fortitude. I take the easy option, fasting on bread and water, wearing a hair shirt and scourging myself with chains.

Ecumenical Diablog says "Don't take the Tablet"

July 05, 2010

Stuart McCullough of the Good Counsel Network deals on a daily basis with mothers in crisis pregnancies and is acutely aware of the damage done by the promotion of contraception, sex education, and the cruel deception of the illusion of a risk free lifestyle. Naturally he is also opposed to abortion. After a long of pulling funny faces when I mentioned that the internet and especially blogs could help his apostolate, Stuart has recently thrown in the towel and started a blog himself: Ecumenical Diablog . It's worth having that one in your blogroll. Following on recent articles ( covered by James Preece and others) justifying abortion in certain circumstances, the Ecumenical Diablog today urges: Catholics Don't Take the Pill or The Tablet . I told him it was too nuanced and ambiguous for my liking :-)

Tablet mountain sightings

May 16, 2010

Many years ago, Sir James Goldsmith's "Now" magazine was the butt of jokes in Private Eye on account of the planting of piles of unsolicited copies in dentists' waiting rooms in a desperate bid to increase sales. Several parish priests have recently told me that they have received piles of unsolicited copies of the Tablet . It would be interesting to know how widespread this is. To my knowledge, Blackfen parish has not received any, but I expect my sacristan would swiftly hide them from me if they were to be delivered. She is touchingly concerned for Father's health and would not want him to suffer high blood pressure unnecessarily. The altar servers who enjoyed the fire extinguisher training session are desperate for a re-run with a real blaze. They did suggest that the Tablet would be suitable kindling matter but could not find any copies in the Church. I encourage parish priests to let me know if they have had problems with the Tablet mountain - and re...

Archbishop Chaput rips into the Tablet

August 26, 2009

Archbishop Chaput of Denver has written a strongly worded condemnation of the recent Tablet editorial urging the US Bishops to support President Obama's healthcare reforms and not to focus on the "specifically Catholic" issue of abortion funding (see my post Tablet on Newman and Abortion ). The article, hosted at the website of the Archdiocese of Denver, is headed " Health care and the common good ". Speaking of the Tablet editorial, Archbishop Chaput says: The editorial has value for several reasons. First, it proves once again that people don't need to actually live in the United States to have unhelpful and badly informed opinions about our domestic issues. Second, some of the same pious voices that once criticized U.S. Catholics for supporting a previous president now sound very much like acolytes of a new president. Third, abortion is not, and has never been, a "specifically Catholic issue," and the editors know it. And fourth, the growing mis...

Bishop Hopes takes Tablet to task

August 21, 2009

See Damian Thompson: Westminster diocese attacks Tablet for stoking up 'culture wars' over Latin Mass Several of us on the blogosphere drew attention to the attempt on the part of the Tablet to enlist Archbishop Nichols into its campaign against the usus antiquior and those priests who make it available for their people. Bishop Hopes points out that, In his message welcoming priests to the training conference provided by the Diocese of Westminster in conjunction with the Latin Mass Society, Archbishop Nichols expresses his gratitude to those priests who have given up their time to respond to a need in the Church today. Bishop Hopes also refutes the claim that the Archbishop was concerned with "potential schism" or that he was suggesting that the place of the usus antiquior is "necessarily marginal". He quite rightly points the finger at the Tablet for stoking up the "culture wars" from which they sanctimoniously profess to distance themselves.

Tablet on Newman and Abortion

August 17, 2009

Earlier this month, the Tablet had an editorial article on John Henry Newman, suggesting that his Catholicism would be a divisive matter both ecumenically and for the nation, and that therefore the Beatification should be principally a celebration of Newman's "Englishness." The website for the cause of Newman's canonisation offers a response that is surely a model of restraint in the circumstances. The article includes this excellent paragraph on truth and peace: Must Newman’s Catholicism in fact be divisive? ‘Challenging’ seems a better word. Whatever we call it, however, we cannot evade Newman’s conviction that the Gospel puts ‘holiness before peace’, and makes the Church independent of every worldly configuration of power. Pope Benedict has recalled this imperative in Newman, his refusal of every secularising alternative so as to (in Newman’s own words) ‘detect and to approve the principle on which … peace is grounded in Scripture; to submit to the dictation of tr...

Catching up on the latest Tablet nonsense

August 09, 2009

I have been rather busy with the Faith Conference, the Evangelium Conference and a parish Sunday, and I am taking a few days' holiday next week in Lourdes but there is just time to have a quick look at the Tablet's desperate attempt to claw back some ground, after its internet drubbing over the Blackfen affair, with its editorial article: The old rite put in its place . Essentially, the Tablet is attempting to use Archbishop Nichols in support of its opposition to the usus antiquior which it persists in calling the "Tridentine Rite" - a dated and inaccurate expression now quite properly abandoned by other commentators on the subject, whatever side of the debate they take. The editorial rightly notes that the Archdiocese of Westminster has sponsored the training course offered by the Latin Mass Society but instead of drawing the obvious conclusion that the usus antiquior is therefore entering the mainstream of ecclesiastical life in England, it presents this as a ...

Tablet Appreciation Society on FB

July 31, 2009

I haven't been on FB for ages - must spend half an hour or so soon and add people kind enough to ask to be friends with me - but I did go over briefly today in response to Damian's post urging us all to join the Tablet Appreciation Society . After all, it would be churlish not to, in view of the fine rose vestments that they enabled my parish to acquire, courtesy of the readers of Damian Thompson's Telegraph blog . Do go over and write on the wall.

James MacMillan lambasts the Tablet, defends bloggers

April 26, 2009

James MacMillan has a cracking letter in this week's Tablet in defence of Catholic bloggers. A sample: The bloggers that appal you so much are united in an obvious love and pride for the counter-cultural challenge of being Catholic in the modern age. No wonder they feel shame that the nominally Catholic Tablet shows no evidence of a similar love or pride. The Tablet seems out of touch, not just with the new enthusiasm for faithfulness and tradition blossoming in the Catholic world, but also out of step with the new participative media technologies. You can read the whole letter over at Damian Thompson's Holy Smoke . You can read more about James MacMillan at Wikipedia and at the Boosey & Hawkes website which describes him as "the pre-eminent Scottish composer of his generation."

Blogging news for Low Week

April 18, 2009

Last year, as is fairly well-known, the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, at their Low Week meeting, discussed the phenomenon of Catholic blogging. Since then, the Tablet newspaper launched an attack on my parish because one of our four weekend precept Masses and one of our six weekday Masses is said in the extraordinary form. From the vast correspondence sent to me, much of it including copies of perfectly well-balanced and reasonable letters sent to the editor of the Tablet (and not published), I hazard a guess that the subsequent correspondence published on the letters page was far from a fair reflection of the correspondence received. Be that as it may, the Catholic blogosphere responded with great generosity, enabling me to pay for our new rose vestments in full with some money left over to save up for some silver candlesticks for our Lady altar. A further consequence of this debacle was that bloggers around the world were left in little doubt about the character of...

Fr Mildew (and spirit-quenching global horror)

March 24, 2009

Fr Mildew was one of my teachers for a while at the John Fisher School in Purley and so I was interested in his reminiscences of his time there. Fr Clifton (to give him his real name) celebrates his golden jubilee this year and has been writing several posts on "My life from a religious perspective." The post on his time at Wonersh gives some details of life at the seminary in the 1950s. He also has chunks from a letter published in this week's Tablet. Let me give you a flavour: The ongoing revision of the ordinary rite, and the introduction of the extraordinary rite, together represent the same process of the surrender of the liturgy to the reactionary, spirit-quenching, traditionalist minority; and the surrender of the entire Church runs in parallel, making a mockery of the life of the Church before both God and the world. It gets better: There was a great move of the Spirit in the Church in Council in our time just over 40 years ago. I weep for its cold-hearted rej...

ICEL and 'liturgical anger'

March 14, 2009

In South Africa, from the end of November last year, Mass was celebrated using the new ICEL translations despite the fact that they had not been authorised for use. The CDW has now ordered the Bishops' Conference to end the practice until the translations are fully approved for use. The Southern Cross, a national Catholic weekly, has run many letters, blog posts and articles critical of the new translations. The popular line seems to be that they are a betrayal of Vatican II. Bishop Dowling agrees with the 'liturgical anger' and the view that there should not in any case be a standard text. To me there is no cogent reason why the language which the People of God in any place use to express their faith and spirituality, and to celebrate the Eucharist, the sacraments and so on has to conform to a Latin text. People ask why — and rightly so. I am concerned that this latest decision from the Vatican may be interpreted as another example of what is perceived to be a systematic ...

The Tablet: how it all started

March 10, 2009

I am not referring to the continued assault on my lovely parish: an embarrassingly obsessive campaign that has generated a reaction of incredulity and dismay from many Catholic priests and laity who have no particular view on the usus antiquior . I refer rather to the policy of dissent from Papal teaching that has characterised the Tablet for longer than the lifetime of many Catholic bloggers and readers. This policy of dissent is the root cause for the astonishing attack on Blackfen and is a much more important issue. Founded in 1840, the Tablet has been through various different hands, being owned by the hierarchy for several decades, sold to a group of laity by Cardinal Hinsley in 1935, and taken on by "The Tablet Trust" in 1976. Its greatest period was under Douglas Woodruff who edited the paper from 1936 to 1967. Reading through some back numbers from 1967-1968, it is evident that there was increasing pressure for a change in the Church's teaching regarding the moral...

Tablet saga continues

March 08, 2009

This week, the Tablet has continued its attack on my parish by publishing three hostile letters. This makes the score 7-2-1 (seven hostile, two friendly, one neutral.) From the vast number of emails and letters I have received, a great many attaching or enclosing letters to the editor, I have reasonable cause to doubt that the proportion of hostile letters published by the Tablet actually represents the balance of correspondence they have received. Among the letters of which I have copies, none could be described as "abusive." I can only assume that the reference to abusive letters is part of the appeal to emotion rather than reason that has characterised much of this controversy - I receive abuse fairly regularly as does anyone involved in publishing. It is part of the territory and normally the "green ink" letters are passed around for a laugh before being thrown in the bin. The press make a point of them only if public opinion is strongly against them and they de...

Pounding a priest?

March 06, 2009

Wait! Isn't that something that is subject to ecclesiastical penalty? Not in this instance Fr Z has started a campaign to " Pound Fr Finigan ". He has given an update for Day Two . He has raised a considerable sum for which I, and many of my parishioners, will be most grateful. Damian Thompson's appeal has also been most helpful and has reached well over £1000. The letters of support have been very moving, coming as they do from people at all levels of society - Judges, QCs, Headteachers, senior Civil Servants; as well as manual workers, students, parents, and children. Many thanks to all of you for your support. I have received many hundreds of letters and emails and will get around to replying to all - in the meantime, please be assured that you are in my prayers and that your encouragement is greatly appreciated.

Tablet publicity spinoffs

February 25, 2009

Damian Thompson has very kindly arranged an appeal for me to defray the cost of purchasing a set of rose vestments for the parish. Any surplus will go towards some silver candlesticks for the Lady Altar. (See: How Holy Smokers can help repair the damage done by the Tablet's nasty article about Fr Tim Finigan's parish ). I spent a part of this afternoon in between Masses opening my post and reading various kind and encouraging letters, many of them with donations included. If you want to send something, the cheque should be payable to "Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen" and the postal address is 330a Burnt Oak Lane SIDCUP Kent DA15 8LW Sorry I haven't got a parish "Paypal" button yet - I'll try and get that going. One priest put "Friendly" on the back of the envelope which enclosed the kind letter he sent me - thank you Father. In fact, I have had very few hostile messages either by post or by email. Ah! email. I am about 150 emails behind at...

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