The Hermeneutic of Continuity

A little late, I know, but warmest congratulations to Thomas Skeats and Robert Gay who were ordained last Saturday at Blackfriars in Oxford by Bishop Longley, and the internet's finest Catholic photographer, Fra Lawrence Lew who was ordained deacon. Fra Lawrence has written about his love for photography and you can browse over 7000 photographs in his Flickr photostream . I knew that I was in some of them so I had a look through some of the sets... On the Godzdogz blog there is also this video from 1964 to promote vocations to the Dominican order. A Dominican priest, ordained ten years, reflects on his own vocation to explore God's truth together with his brothers under Mary's protection. There is some fascinating footage of the Dominican rite of Mass. It is always encouraging to hear good news and I am delighted that the Dominicans both here and in Ireland are flourishing.

Photo © Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk (from Invocation Flickr set ) Catholic with Attitude has written an enthusiastic personal account of the recent Invocation weekend. (See: Invocation 2010 = Brilliant! ) He notes particularly that the heart of the weekend was the communal prayer of the Sacred Liturgy in the Divine Office and Mass, and that there was also plenty of time for private prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. The weekend also offered young people the opportunity to talk informally with priests and religious about their vocation. Congratulations to Fr Langridge and the team for organising this first National Vocations Discernment weekend. May it be the first of many.

The other day, I posted a video of the Commencement Speech given in Latin by Mary Ann Marks. Many thanks to Gillineau in the combox for passing on the news from the Harvard Gazette that Mary Ann is entering the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist . It is wonderful to hear this: please say a prayer for Mary Ann. Here is the text from the Harvard Gazette: Queens, N.Y., native Mary Anne Marks is a classics and English joint concentrator who fell in love with the Latin language by studying Cicero’s Catilinarian Orations. “The links between Latin and Romance languages are fascinating, and, at the same time, Latin has the ability to say things in ways that are not available to Romance languages or to English,” said Marks. “I mused about ideas for the speech for weeks before setting pen to paper, and, once I’d picked a topic, I consulted with friends and acquaintances from various departments to make sure it spoke to their experiences at Harvard.” In the fall, Marks is head...

Anna-Marie Treloar, one of my young parishioner ( left in the photo ) went to the Invocation 2010 weekend. At my request, she kindly wrote this report: Invocation 2010 The event, probably best described as a youth festival celebrating and promoting religious vocations, was billed by the organizers as ‘the first of its kind in England and Wales’. The weekend was structured around basic liturgy of Divine Office and Daily Mass, with talks from keynote speakers and a selection of workshops. For me, the talks were the highlight of the event. The first speaker, Abbot Christopher Jamison, spoke about the theology behind the idea of vocation, setting the tone for the weekend. The second talk by Dr Andrew O’Connell was a brilliantly delivered, energetic and encouraging look at the need for vocations today, and how fulfillment can never ultimately be found in a digital age of instant gratification, but only in Christ. The last speaker I heard was Sr Gabriel Davison, who gave a very personal...

Mass at Wonersh was at 8 o'clock this morning: a little later than usual in view of the festive occasion of the institution of several students as Lectors and Acolytes. Here are the lists: Lectors Valentine Erhahon Dominic Findlay-Wilson John Watts Daniel Weatherly Acolytes ( left to right in photo above ) Harry Heijveld Paul Keys Thomas Lynch Simon Dray Oliver Lowson Valentine Erhahon Tomorrow, Gerard Hatton will be ordained Deacon. I was sorry not to be able to stay for that, but as well as the usual schedule in the parish I have a wedding and a baptism in the afternoon so we have our own celebrations here. Congratulations to all the students who have take a step closer to priestly ordination. I am proud to have a small role in their formation.

Fr Stephen Langridge has sent details of this National Vocations Discernment weekend - the first ever. It runs from 2-4 July at Oscott College in Birmingham and is for young men and women discerning a vocation to the priesthood or the religious life or simply wanting to find out more. There will be a number of religious communities represented. Archbishops Longley, Smith, and Nichols will be celebrating the Masses. Here is the information: Invocation 2010 Do you need space to consider what God wants you to do with your life? Are you intrigued by the possibility of priesthood or religious life? Would you like the chance to find out more? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, Invocation 2010 could be just the thing for you! It is our first ever National Vocations Discernment weekend and it will take place at St Mary's College, Oscott - where the Pope will stay when he come to England. The weekend will begin on the evening of Friday 2nd July and end with a special Mas...

Carolina Cannonball, The Crescat writes of the Pontifical High Mass at Washington from the perspective of a mum who noticed particularly the reactions of the children who were there: If we can think of it in terms of our children, our future, then we owe it to our faith to keep our churches beautiful and our masses solemn. The look of wide eyed wonder on their faces said it all. I have certainly noticed myself that babies and young children at a sung Mass in the usus antiquior seem to be much more contented that when I am earnestly reading texts in English through a microphone. She goes on to describe the Great DC Blognic to which she took her young son because she wanted him to meet good, normal priests and seminarians. In a succinct and direct way, she explains how families can promote vocations: I have one rule for my family... they must never bash The Church or say anything negative about a priest or other member of a religious community in front of my son. So far they have ...

Ealing Abbey are holding a "Discovering Priesthood" day next month. This initiative involves the Benedictine Community, Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and the diocesan vocation director. Fr Stephen Langridge, Fr Stephen Wang (Allen Hall), Fr Francis Selman (Allen Hall), Fr Richard Nesbit (Westminster Vocations) will be coming as well as some young priests who were ordained at the Abbey and seminarians who work with us in catechetics. Everyone who is coming has been involved in the parish catechesis in some way. Here are the details: DISCOVERING PRIESTHOOD A day for young men We invite young men to join us at a ‘Discovering Priesthood Day’ on Saturday 13th March, 10.00am - 4.00pm The day offers young men a chance to meet priests and seminarians from the diocese and religious communities to learn more about the life and ministry of a priest. To book a place or for further information contact: Deacon Gordon Nunn, at the Parish Office, Ealing Abbey, 2, Marchwood Cresce...

A priest friend from the Diocese of Brentwood alerted me to the new Brentwood Vocations website and blog which looks good. There is a whole team of bloggers including one of my students, Fr Keane, author of " The Martyrs' Crown ", and Mgr John Armitage.

The Faith group at the John Fisher School continues to thrive under the guidance of the indomitable "Sir Dan of the Blogosphere". Dan acts as a kind of human version of Google Reader, phoning me up regularly with carefully chosen snippets from Rorate Caeli , LifeSite News , Fr Z , NLM , St John's Valdosta and others. He is a great example of a "Silver Surfer" - he was a teacher when I was a boy, and has carried on in a pastoral role at the school since his retirement. Last evening, I went over to talk to the Faith Group at the school on the subject of "What makes man unique?": the principal thesis being "We have a spiritual and immortal soul [ De Fide ]". Sadly, Takapuna, the house where priests used to live when there were many teaching at the school, is now boarded up and surrounded by mesh fencing. Nevertheless, the new venue in the Sixth Form Centre is good. One advantage of the new venue is the projector and interactive whiteboard with...

A priest friend of mine kindly sent me a set of CDs of the bible as a gift on the occasion of my silver jubilee. It is the King James Bible and we know that is not ideal but we are waiting for someone to record the Vulgate... I have started listening to the Bible during my frequent moderately lengthy car journeys. Well - an hour or so is moderately lengthy by UK standards; by US standards, I suppose that would just be just like popping out to the shops. At any rate, I am now half way through the book of Leviticus. This morning I met my new Sacramental Theology class at Wonersh. The majority are in the fourth year of seminary training and in the final year of the theology degree. I also have two former Anglican students for occasional tutorials. I enjoyed getting back into the swing of talking about the theology of the sacraments and I think that my experience of teaching other courses at Parkminster helps to round things out a bit, especially with regard to Christology and the Theology...

The Southwark Vocations website has had a makeover with some good photos (including some of my parishioners on one page) and the blog integrated into the website. (When looking at people's website, I often check the page source to see whether any particular tool was used to build it, what the html is like and so on. This one has clean, valid markup and was generated by iWeb-Build so I had a look on google to see what that was. Then, of course, I remembered that Fr Langridge is a Mac man!)

H/T Fr Ray Blake

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 .

Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, Secretary for the Congregation for the Clergy, has written to commend the Handbook for Parish Vocations teams produced by Fr Stephen Langridge, our Diocesan Vocations Director ( pictured with Fr Benedict Groeschel .) Archbishop Piacenza writes that the Handbook: "appears to have struck a healthy balance between the centrality of the universal vocation to holiness by virtue of our baptism and the indispensable vocations to priesthood and the consecrated life by which the Church worships God, proclaims the Gospel, and witnesses to the work of Grace in her members". He also praises the Handbook's emphasis on Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament: "Indeed, the volume might serve as a useful resource within the apostolate of Eucharistic Adoration, fostering an awareness of the responsibility of every member of Christ's faithful to pray for and encourage vocations to the priesthood, and to faithfully understand its nature and place within the Ch...

Kate, mother of eight children, writes an excellent blog called "At home in my Father's house" (now added to the blogroll). She has followed up on my recent post about The importance of a "culture of vocation" with her own thoughts on the culture of vocation at home . One of her sons is in the "Quo Vadis" group organised by Fr Stephen Langridge, the vocations Director for Southwark (see: Southwark Vocations )so say a prayer for him and for the others in the group. I was at Wonersh today for my last session of the academic year. The students have various pastoral and other courses before the summer break. First of all, though, they have to take their exams so a prayer for them to St Joseph Cupertino would not go amiss.

An article in USA Today can serve as a reminder of the importance of encouraging a culture of vocation. (See: Study: Nearly half of new priests were discouraged against seminary ) A survey produced for the US bishops by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University found that almost 45% of Catholic priests planning to be ordained this year said that they had been discouraged from considering the priesthood. Of those, nearly 6 in 10 said a parent or family member was the source of the discouragement. Fifty-one percent said a friend or classmate had counseled them against the priesthood, and 15% said a priest or other clergy had. The percentages add up to more than 100 because respondents could select more than one category. This does not surprise me and I expect the percentages would be larger in England. In my diocese, Fr Stephen Langridge, Southwark Vocations Director has been working hard to encourage a "culture of vocation" in which a v...

I received an email today from a reader who has come up with the idea of marking the " Year for Priests " by marking your local priest's anniversary of ordination. He has put up some ideas for this on his Vocations Guide website (I can't link directly to the page: click the "longer explanation" for parish clergy and then click "Happy Anniversary Father".) The suggestions are very simple - a card, a gift of a spiritual book, perhaps helping children to participate by drawing their own cards etc. This initiative strikes me as good ideas because it helps lay people to celebrate with their priest the most important reason he is there for them - i.e. his priesthood . It is also good for us priests to be reminded of this. Another suggestion (I can't remember where I read this) is that whenever a priest comes to your home, always ask for his blessing before he leaves. As a priest, I always like to kneel down to receive the blessing of another priest ...

From Kenrick-Glennon Seminary H/T The Curt Jester

Thanks to NLM for this video of a day in the life of the students of the Institute of the Good Shepherd in Rome. There is much here with which to be impressed - the devout celebration of Lauds and Mass in the morning, the friendly engagement with the lay students at the University Santa Croce, the parish priest's sensible recognition that here are some chaps who can help him with parish catechesis, the community gathered for a festive meal (prepared with consummate ecological correctness from natural ingredients) and the sense of hope and joy in the priesthood. Hey! there are even some scenes featuring the house mascot "Gustave" the cat. L'Institut du Bon Pasteur à Rome by KTOTV