The Hermeneutic of Continuity

Today at St John's Seminary Wonersh the following students received the ministry of Lector: Ansel D'Mello (Portsmouth) Dominik Lau (Portsmouth) Robert Stuwart (Portsmouth) Eamonn Hyde (Brentwood) Peter Littleton (Southwark) Louie Kitt (Southwark) Andrew Saunders (Wrexham) and Mark Wharton (Southwark) received the ministry of Acolyte. Please remember these fine young men in your prayers. May they continue to listen to the words inscribed over the entrance to the chapel: Magister adest et vocat te . (The Master is here and he is calling you.) The picture shows Rev Sam Davey who is to be ordained to the sacred priesthood on 20 July, with Eamonn Hyde.

I suppose that most of us tend to be parochial in our interest in politics. Before my trip to Australia, I had not heard much of Julia Gillard. In Melbourne, the forthcoming Labour Party leadership election was a hot topic. Yesterday, my chosen source for daily news over breakfast, The Week , featured her removal in their most useful "10 things you need to know today" as well as in a couple of customarily succinct feature articles so I would have finally caught up. An important reason for the interest of orthodox Australian priests in the contest is Gillard's strong advocacy of abortion as a "woman's right", most recently expressed in her "blue tie" speech earlier this month. Lifesite news has a video and commentary on their article Radical pro-abortion Australian Prime Minister ousted after strident gender/abortion speech . The upshot is that Australians are, generally speaking, more pro-life and pro-family than the English but also that Kevin R...

Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. Hence I am in a communist country for a couple of hours, though only in the airside area of Hong Kong International Airport. My return journey started at Melbourne airport yesterday night at 2340 Aussie time (9 hours ahead of UK). The flight took nine hours and we got to Hong Kong at 0645 Hong Kong time (7 hours ahead of UK). At 1005, I will be on a thirteen hour flight and get to London at 1600 UK time. It's all rather confusing but I was blessedly free of jet-lag in Australia and the East-West journey is supposed to be better from that point of view. There was a breakfast served on the aeroplane but it was only a little more appetising than one expects such meals to be. When I get on the next flight we will be served dinner after an hour or so. Therefore I decided on having a hobbit-like second breakfast while waiting at the airport and have just had a delicious bowl of Won Ton soup with shri...

Zephyrinus has posted the news that my kind parishioners have arranged for a homecoming present for me on my return from Australia. Now that I have a more sophisticated knowledge of Australia than I had from Monty Python, Barry MacKenzie and Crocodile Dundee, I think it is appropriate to say that I have been in Melbourne, not Queensland. (I hope this does not offend readers from Queensland.)

This morning one of the seminarians drove me to the Church of St Aloysius in Caulfield where Bishop Meeking  celebrated Pontifical High Mass, arranged by the parish in anticipation of the diamond jubilee of his priestly ordination on the 19th of July 1953. Fr Tattersall, the parish priest, was Assistant Priest, Fr Marshall was Deacon, I was Subdeacon and seminarians were (very competent) first and second MCs. In my case, they needed to be competent since I'm not very familiar with the ceremonies and have to be guided quite a bit. Fr Tattersall preached a fine sermon on the priesthood with particular reference to St Maximilian Kolbe who went to begin his slow martyrdom at Auschwitz with the words "I am a Catholic priest." There will be some photographs of the Mass posted in due course on the website of the Catholic Community of Blessed John Henry Newman . In the meantime, here is a photo of the cake: The interior of the Church: The shrine of Blessed J...

The Evangelium  project, put together by Fr Marcus Holden and Fr Andrew Pinsent, and published by the CTS , has reached Melbourne. A couple of years ago, Fr Marcus Holden visited to speak to the ACCC  and introduced Evangelium. Evangelium in Australia , organised by Fr Nicholas Pearce ( on the left in the photo ) has a summer school in January, and yesterday there was a one day winter conference on the topic "How to defend your faith without raising your voice. I spoke in the morning and got to meet many of the sixty or so enthusiastic young adults who came. It was an impressive day with quite a packed programme. In addition to the talks, there was the divine office, rosary, Mass with Archbishop Hart and a holy hour with Benediction. From Friday 13 September to Sunday 15 September, there are retreats for men and women aged 18-35. The women will be at the Amberly Retreat Centre in Sydney with the Dominican Sisters of Nashville (Sydney) and the men will be at ...

This is a post for the young adults who are attending my talk in Melbourne on "Defending Your Catholic Faith." Rather than hand out a book list, I thought it would be more efficient to post some links here. I suggested that you should have a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a basic reference book for Catholic doctrine. You can get this for $11 from St Pauls . You can also read the text online at the Vatican website . As I said, there is a vast number of books on apologetics. Here is a list of some good ones:  Popular Catholic Apologetics Books . Here is a good introduction by Carl Olsen: Be a Catholic Apologist Without Apology Many books written in the USA are aimed at apologetics in the face of Protestant objections to the faith. This is something that Americans have to do more than we do in England or Australia where we will more often face objections to the faith from a secularist point of view. An excellent short pamphlet is  Apologia by Fr M...

Yesterday afternoon, the ACCC had their business meeting and so I went for a walk in the centre of Melbourne. I was dropped off at the corner of Lonsdale Street and Elizabeth Street, the site of the Church of St Francis . Built betweem 1841 and 1845, it is the oldest Church in Victoria and the place where St Mary of the Cross (St Mary MacKillop) was baptised and received her first Holy Communion. After talking to the clergy here in Australia, I am determined to find a good life of this saint to read. St Francis was the Cathedral Church of Melbourne until St Patrick's Cathedral was opened for worship in the late 1860s. It is in the care of the Blessed Sacrament Congregation and there is adoration each day from 6.45am to 5.30pm. Here is a view of the interior of the Church: The Ladye Chapel is beautiful:

On Wednesday evening, Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett celebrated a low Requiem Mass for the deceased members and associates of the ACCC in the Blessed Sacrament chapel of St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne. After that, I gave a public lecture on the theme of the Church and Lumen Gentium at the Cardinal Knox Centre next door. This was the opportunity for a photo of x with Z-swag in the wild:

The other day I mentioned that I did not get to see a wombat. A parishioner from home sent me a picture of one. It is the L6 Wombat (Weapon Of Magnesium, Battalion, Anti-Tank), a 120 mm calibre recoilless anti-tank rifle used by the British Army before the invention of guided anti-tank missiles, though it was retained until the late 1980's for possible shoot and scoot attacks in built-up areas in case of attack by the Warsaw Pact. I can't think why the Healsville Wildlife Sanctuary would need a collection of these. Perhaps there are occasional riots by psychotic emus or something.

The Apostolic Nuncio, five Bishops and some very learned clergy are present at the ACCC conference here in Melbourne. I was getting increasingly nervous last night and this morning before the first of the lectures which I am giving. I was speaking about the background, history and aftermath of Vatican II. On the programme I discovered that Bishop Meeking is giving an after-dinner speech this evening on Vatican II. He was there and so knows a lot more than I do about it. Thanks be to God the talk seemed to have gone down well and I am now feeling a little more relaxed about the remaining talks. Tomorrow I am giving a lecture in the morning called "Vatican II and Trent Compared" - you can add "not contrasted" in brackets. Then in the evening there is the public lecture in  which I am looking at Lumen Gentium and the theology of the Church. This evening I will get to see some more of Melbourne since I will be walking from Corpus Christi College to the Savage Cl...