Wishing You A Very Blessed Christmas

LMS Pilgrimage to Rome, November 2013

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE LATIN MASS SOCIETY

 

LMS Pilgrimage to Rome, November 2013

 

The Latin Mass Society will be organising a pilgrimage to Rome in November 2013.  Departure from the UK will be on Thursday, 7 November and the return will be on Tuesday, 12 November.  It is most likely that the flight will be from either Stanstead or Luton Airports to suit the majority of pilgrims, although a northern option is also being considered.

 

Accommodation is being reserved at a convent in central Rome, which is within walking distance of St Peter’s Basilica and many of the principal churches and visitor sites.  We expect to take with us at least one chaplain.

 

The dates of the pilgrimage have been chosen to coincide with the biennial meeting of the International Federation Una Voce, which takes place on the Saturday and Sunday.  Although our pilgrims will not be directly involved in this meeting, the choice of these dates will mean that Latin Mass supporters from many parts of the world will be in Rome at the time, providing opportunities for Solemn Masses and other liturgies in major churches, which LMS pilgrims will be able to attend.  Some time will be set aside for sightseeing.

 

Every effort is being made to keep the cost down, so as to be affordable for as many people as we can manage.  The full cost, including flights and five nights’ accommodation in Rome is not expected to exceed £500 per person, although this will have to be confirmed when the arrangements are finalised.

 

At present, we invite members and non-members to register an expression of interest with our office staff, either by e-mail or telephone:

 

info@lms.org.uk

020 7404 7284

 

Anyone interested is urged to make early contact, so that the size of the group can be established, and preliminary bookings made.  Registering at this stage does not mean a firm commitment.

 

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE LATIN MASS SOCIETY

Publication of FIUV Traditional Position Papers in a Single Volume

 

The International Federation Una Voce (FIUV), to which the Latin Mass Society is affiliated, announces the publication of a collection of short Position Papers on aspects of the Traditional Mass (Extraordinary Form), which represent an  important contribution to the ongoing debate about the Catholic liturgy.

 

The papers are short but include many references to the Magisterium, and seek to express the main arguments on each topic in a pithy and easily understood way.

 

The topics include the manner of receiving Communion (in the hand or on the tongue), worship facing east, the use of Latin, altar girls, the Eucharistic fast, and the role of the traditional liturgy in the New Evangelisation. Copies are available from Lulu:

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-joseph-shaw/fiuv-position-papers/paperback/product-20582834.html

 

"Let me say simply that reading and ruminating over the FIUV Papers on the Liturgy could serve as a marvellous primer for anyone, clergy or laity, on how to address what often ends up being controversial, doing so in a very different and respectful manner." 

Archbishop Thomas Gullickson, Nuncio to the Ukraine.

 

 

 

For further information, please contact Mike Lord, General Manager,

on (T) 020 7404 7284; (F) 020 7831 5585; (E mail) michael@lms.org.uk

Mass in Brighton on Christmas Day

There will be a Christmas Day Mass at St Mary Magdalen, Brighton, at 9.00 am, please see the sidebar for the address.

Changes to Mass times

This Sunday, 16th December, the Mass at St Thomas More, Seaford, will be at 12.15 pm, NOT 3.00pm, as usual. That's just for this coming Sunday.


From the New Year, Masses at Our Lady of Consolation, West Grinstead, will be at the new time of 12.30 pm, and no longer at 3.00 pm.

Any other changes, I'll let you know.

Off piste.

Having read some blogs, the odd book and the oftentimes very odd bits of The Pill online, I'm detecting a theme.

I think we are all meant to be stupid. I'm coming to believe it might even be an unofficial policy - at least in terms of music, liturgy, and catechesis we are being offered by them that knows what's best for us. You know, the ones who think sin's too big a word, let alone concept, for kids, when they can quite happily not get tongue tied saying deinonychus and iguanodon.

What amused me the most this week, apart from the funny and dare I say, dinosaur comments from Mr Inwood regarding Latin Masses (more of that in a minute), was the Pill's questionnaire of the new translation. Best mantilla twitch to Fr Finigan. UPDATE: They've done yet another version of the questionnaire. I think they'll keep changing it until they get the result they want. Go over and fill it in again, I have!

Oh my. Do pop over and have a look. It's quite frankly astonishing to be asked if your priest finds all those long words a bit much and might find them a tad, well, hard. I know educationally things have taken a bit of a dive in the past 20 or so years, but things are that bad? One burning question, do you see people around you struggling to follow the new text? Well yeah, but only when the Mass that's printed on the sheet isn't the one being said. That tends to confuse the best of us.

As I said. Oh. My.

I've been assisting at the new translation Masses since the beginning. A priest who wants to go off piste, still goes off piste. A priest who follows the rubrics still follows the rubrics. I don't find it to be the number of syllables in a sentence that causes the problems at the ordinary form Mass.

It's certainly better with the new translation, although I do find it a bit clunky, if I'm honest.

Ah, music. There's been a lot in the blogosphere about music lately on a more positive note, and Clare and Fr Ray show what's possible when you ditch Peace, Perfect Peace on repeat, but the naughty Eccles  has had his say, The Bones his, and our Chairman Joe Shaw, his.

Now briefly I'm going to have mine. The trite rubbish I had to sing (and still have to on occasion) from my earliest years is all thanks to the likes of Mr Inwood. I've suffered, yes suffered, guitars, tambourines, recorders, jazz guitar, jazz flute, hand clapping, keyboards, and choruses so repetitively inane they could be used for brainwashing and mind control on Homeland, and Mr Inwood has the nerve to infer that because I wasn't brought up with the Latin Mass, I have no right to it pastorally? I know this is a common mind set in those antipathetic to the Latin Mass, but it's no less irritating every time it's dredged up.

Instead of us all being lowest common denominatored a la school assembly, how about a little spiritual elevation?

In other news, I hear the heir of the heir is to have an heir. It's always lovely when a baby's on the way. Haven't heard anyone call this foetus anything other than 'baby' in the press, and yet surely, it's the same press that will quite happily call any other baby a mass of tissue, only a few cells, something less than human? Just saying.

 

 

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE LATIN MASS SOCIETY

 

 

Confirmations in the Traditional Rite in London

 

 

The Latin Mass Society held its annual ceremony of Confirmations in the Extraordinary Form on Saturday, 24 November. Bishop Alan Hopes, auxiliary in the Archdiocese of Westminster, conferred the Sacrament to 23 candidates at St James’s Church, Spanish Place, in central London. Assisting the bishop were Fr Rupert McHardy, Cong. Orat., Fr Tim Finigan and the parish priest of St James’s, Fr Christopher Colven. The Confirmations were followed by Pontifical Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

 

 

 

 

Afterwards, the confirmands, their sponsors, and families went for lunch in St James’s parish centre, where Bishop Hopes cut a celebratory cake.

 

 

 

 

LMS General Manager, Mike Lord, said: ‘We were delighted with the number of candidates we received for Traditional Confirmations in London this year, particularly as there had been, for the first time, two other Traditional Confirmation ceremonies this year in Wirral and Stoke-on-Trent. We would like to thank Bishop Hopes for agreeing to confer the Sacrament this year and look forward to another successful event in London next year. We would very much like to see other Confirmations in the Extraordinary Form across the whole country and would urge all bishops to consider offering this Sacrament in its traditional form in their dioceses as part of their pastoral care for the faithful.’

 

More photos can be found HERE

 

For further information, please contact Mike Lord, General Manager,

on (T) 020 7404 7284; (F) 020 7831 5585; (E mail) michael@lms.org.uk

Hmmm.

Joe Shaw has a very interesting post on Catechesis on his blog. It's something I feel quite strongly about. I'm not going to get all theological, or argue particularly, just offer a bit of my own experience of catechesis. We've been in quite a few parishes over the years, and seen quite a few First Holy Communions and Confirmations. I'm not thinking particularly about Confirmation at the moment, just First Holy Communion, which to be honest is a well meaning muddle.

So what is my immediate experience. Well, mainly that what was/is taught at home is not what was/is taught during most ordinary parish classes. There is a decided tension, if not conflict, between the two. On the one hand, it's very nice to be on Team God, included, with a sanctuary full of participatory opportunities for the committed 7 year old girl (or boy, perhaps) once the First Communion party is done with. There is nothing wrong with the old gather and share, but why is Holy Communion so important and special if anyone can sit round the altar holding hands at the Our Father, and pretty much anyone can be a 'minister of the Eucharist' handing out the Body of Our Lord at Holy Communion? Where is the concept of sacrifice, and Calvary, that supernatural otherness?

 

Take another bete noir, that awfully dirty word, sin. Sin is represented currently as just a  'bad choice'. If sin is only ever just a 'bad choice', and you make the ultimate 'bad choice' and cut yourself off entirely from God, ummmm, so what? There are no longer term consequences, because hey kids, doesn't matter what Our Lord said, hell just isn't there any more. Is it ever going to be age-appropriate to talk about hell?

You see the kind of thing I mean. There's a bit of conflict between the two kinds of catechesis. In my experience, kids are rather fond of black and white. Grey happens when you're older, and you have the black and white to guide you. Small kids aren't very good in a grey fog. They can understand complexity, Transubstantiation, mystery, silence, symbolism. They don't need to be talked down to or patronised, or babied. But I haven't met one that does fog very well.

 

 

 So I was very grateful when a friend lent me a copy of My First Holy Communion, What the very young need to know for their First Holy Communion, by Bishop Morrow. We have Know Your Mass, and the Penny Catechism, and the class books, and now we have this gem. The first copyright on it is 1949. It's in very, very, simple English, but it tells it like it is, first and foremost, that God is love.

Which is odd, considering I was led to believe that God only really started loving us after 1962...

Mass in Bexhill this Sunday, 25th November

Masses are every two months on the 4th Sunday at St Mary Magdalene Catholic Church, Sea Road, Bexhill, TN40 1RH at 8.00 am. The celebrant is Fr Bruno Witchalls.

A Very Happy Thanksgiving

...to all my American readers. I'm making pumpkin pie today, any excuse!

Change of Mass time for Seaford in December

The 3.00pm Mass at St Thomas More, Seaford, will now be at 12.15pm on Sunday, 16th December.

Missa Cantata in Carshalton this Sunday

...18th November, at Holy Cross, 46 North Street, Carshalton, Surrey, SM5 2JD  at 5.00pm.

The celebrant will be Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith.

This blogger...

...is finding herself a tad snowed under at the mo, will post more asap! But here's a pertinent seasonal picture:

All Souls

St Gertrude, bet she would have a thing or two to say about confessionals. I love her prayer for the Holy Souls:

"Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory.''




 

So this is where the Confessional...

from my parish church ended up:

http://www.churchantiques.com/product/confessional-box-our-lady-of-ransom-eastbourne/


How many souls were saved through it, I wonder?

Wishing you a very happy feast day!

 

It's so wonderful to be able to give thanks and remember you're never that far from your friends in heaven.

 

And of course, it's a good excuse for a glass of wine and an enormous celebratory chocolate cake (which we shall be eating on our return from the Mass in Lewes this evening).

 

Hope you all have a great Feast of All Saints!

Discuss

1: Jimmy Savile and his ilk

and

2: The birth control implants for girls of 13 WITHOUT parental consent (which is really bizarre considering you can't even use savlon and a plaster on a child if you're a school first aider in this country).

So, forgive me for being a little confused, but why is the second not perceived as a licence for the first, and why is the government complicit in this particular form of child abuse?

All Saints Mass in Lewes

Just a reminder that there will be a Low Mass at St Pancras at 8.00pm this Thursday.

The future's...

...still folky? Really, after all this time?

 I was brought up on kum ba yah and similar meaningless ditties, as some of you might know. They are so middle of the last century. They are so of their time. They are so DATED it's almost embarrassing.

Wouldn't it be nice to get back to the timeless, the meaningful, the kind of music that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck at Mass and makes you think WOW rather than thinking you're back at junior school assembly? I'll admit there are quite a lot of things liturgically in the NO that make me want to weep. But I can always close my eyes at a push, and a mantilla is a beautiful thing if pulled down far enough to avoid having to see anything at all, but you can never avoid the music. And it's not always possible to get to a said NO Mass.

So. Have a look at La Croix. Mon Dieu.

Pictures speak louder than words by the way, if your French, like mine is a tad ropey.

Shaking things up a bit...

...I like this. But I would.