Favourite Prayers Meme

I`m rather late to this and have been tagged three times but off the top of my head and as the rules exclude prayers from the liturgy I would say:

a) the Rosary,
b) May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest and peace at the last. (I always use this at funerals in the OF at the end of the bidding prayers.)
c) My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence; I beg your pardon for my sins and the grace to spend this time of prayer fruitfully. My immaculate Mother, St Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Dilston Pictures

Thanks to Terry for these pictures from the Dilston Mass. As you will see the space for Mass is very limited thanks to the addition of choirs stalls when the Anglicans took it over in the 18th century. The altar is only a small table so I took advantage of only needing to have four candles for a sung Mas without ministers. Our MC decreed that there would not be room for acolytes which is quite true so we only had two servers. We only had one singer until the Jarrow men arrived who had heard that Mass was at 7.30 and so arrived during the Gospel. Mass was offered for the deceased members of the Radcliffe family. We have booked in for July 22nd next year at 7.30pm

This last one is of me and the Jarrow Schola

Here is a picture taken by Leo of me and a distinguished visitor!

Lanherne Sisters want to open a house in Darlington

I was glad to see this story on Joseph`s Shaw`s blog. I had heard about this a while back but didn`t realise it was now public. The contemplative sisters of the Franciscans of the Immaculate would like to open a new house. They opened their house in Lanherne in Cornwall a few years ago. Now they want to expand and are interested in the Carmelite monastery in Darlington where the nuns are preparing to leave. Problem is they need £1.5m to buy the monastery and, being Franciscans, they don`t have it and would need someone to hold it in trust for them. What a wonderful boost this would be for the diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. The sisters use the Extraordinary Form for their liturgy.

Mass at Dilston

On Thursday of this week, being the feast of St Mary Magdalen, I am saying Mass at Dilston once again. St Mary Magdalen is the dedication of this historic Catholic chapel. However there has been some confusion over the time of the start of the Mass. It will in fact start at 7pm and not 6.30 or 7.30 as advertised in other places. I hope this message is seen by most who are intending to be there.

Ushaw decays

Visitors to Ushaw College walking around the grounds soon come across the derelict junior seminary building. It was completed in 1859 to the design of Edward Welby Pugin. In my time as a student it was used for youth employment scheme. It now stands empty. I once had the opportunity of visiting the chapel. I can`t remember how but I stumbled across a site which has pictures of the interior. It is so sad to see the buildings in this state. Pictures courtesy of 28Days Later urban exploration site where more can be found.

Carmel flourishes

Having spent six months on Boar`s Hill outside Oxford as a postulant and novice with the Discalced Carmelites back in 1982 I always have a fondness for Carmel. ( I left as I realised I was having a liturgical crisis.) I imagine readers will be aware of the new community of Carmelites, using the Extraordinary Form, in Wyoming in the USA, but I hadn`t realised how ambitious they are. As you can see they have bought an area in the mountains and plan to build an enormous monastery in the Gothic style. It`s hard to imagine this happening in England! According to the website they are flooded with vocations and have had 500 inquiries in the last few years. It all gives hope for the future: God still send vocations to His Church. At the same time it is strange that a community like this should be doing so well while others with similar aims don`t seem to do as well.

Whatever happened to...

.............the Compendium Eucharisticum? You may remember that on March 25th 2009 the CDW published this volume. The first part concerns doctrine and theology of the Eucharist, the second major liturgical texts and the third devotional prayers connected with the Mass and Eucharistic adoration. It was presented to the Pope on October 22nd 2009. The text was in Latin. I just thought vernacular versions might have been available by now. Alciun Reid reviewed it in the Catholic Herald and on the NLM. It is interesting in that it gives the order of Mass for both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms and also the office for Corpus Christi in both forms of the Roman Rite.

It is available in Latin from Pax Books at $48.61. I may look out for it in the Vatican bookshop when I`m in Rome in October but I hope the vernacular versions won`t be much longer in being produced as it sounds like a useful tool for catechesis.

A few dubia you may have missed

The new issue of Canon Law Abstracts arrived in the post this week. I don`t think I`m a natural canon lawyer but I do give a quick browse to see if there is anything that interests me and as always I went first for the section on the Eucharist to see what there was.

There were three responses by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments from 2009 two of which I don`t remember seeing before.

The first regards a priest either choosing to receive Holy Communion after all the congregation have received or distributing the host so that he can receive simultaneously with the congregation. Both these practices are reprobated and the comment is made:" It is not a question of human dignity but expressing his role as presiding minister acting in the person of Christ."

The next considers whether it is correct for a bishop to act as a concelebrant at a priest`s jubilee Mass so that the jubilarian can be main celebrant. I must admit I`ve always been uneasy with bishops concelebrating at a Mass where the main celebrant is a priest. The comment is made: " Theologically the bishop must always preside, even if he does so in choir dress and presides over the Liturgy of the Word but does not concelebrate. This is provided in Caerimoniale Episcoporum no.18."

This was new to me. I looked up the Caerimoniale no. 18 which says:

When a bishop presides at the eucharist but is not the celebrant, he does everything in the liturgy of the word that belongs to the celebrant and he concludes the Mass with the rite of dismissal, following the provisions given in nos 176-185.

176-185 say the bishop is to vest in alb, stole, cope and mitre so this seems to extend the possibility to him presiding over the liturgy of the Word in choir dress.

The third response concerns whether it is correct for concelebrants to elevate chalices at the end of the Eucharistic prayer. This too is reprobated. The comment is : "The purpose of this elevation is not to show the consecrated elements to the people but to express the giving of glory to God. Only the celebrant with the assistance of a deacon for the chalice should do this."

I was under the impression that this`little` elevation in the OF was meant to show the elements to the people and so wondered why very often the ciborium bowl is elevated without the people being able to see the host. However I shall adjust things accordingly. Concelebrants nearest the celebrant are normally invited to elevate the chalice but this is no longer to be done.

Small points of liturgical law for the OF but I thought they might be of interest.

CTS Reviews

Andrew Plasom-Scott, a former member of the Schola Gregoriana of Northumbria, has wrtiten to let me know about his latest blogging project which is a series of reviews of new CTS publications. His latest review is of the CTS pamphlet on Catholic Traditionalism. You can find the blog here.

More on Fr Gary Dickson`s article

Fr Dickson`s article has been very well received, not just by Another Anonymous in the comments on the previous post, but in many places on the blogosphere. Fr Z has commented favourably, the NLM picked it up here and I came across this today on a blog which is new to me, Catholicism Pure, where the author writes of `this impressive article` and concludes:

I wish we had more priests as committed, perceptive and ready to defend Catholic tradition as Father Gary Dickson.

Lost and Found

I have just had a call from Westminster cathedral sacristy to say that my biretta which I discovered I must have left in the sacristy has been found. I can`t say how relieved I am and impressed by the sacristy staff who took time to look for it in the midst of their centenary week.

I imagine in pre-conciliar days there was a constant losing of birettas on occasions at cathedrals.

Hexham and Newcastle LMS blog

I am delighted to say that our new diocesan LMS reps, David and Theresa O`Neill, have started a blog. Many other areas of the country have an LMS blog so I`m glad to see we have one too. You can find it here.

Fr Gary Dickson in the Catholic Herald

Fr Dickson is a priest of Hexham and Newcastle and parish priest of Sacred Heart and English Martyrs at Thornley, Co Durham. He has introduced a Sunday Mass in the Extraordinary Form to his parish and this week has written an article for the Catholic Herald about his experience. His article can be found here.