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.

High Mass Pictures

Here are some photos of the Coxhoe Mass on the 21st June and one of the Mass for SS Peter and Paul last night at Longbenton. Many thanks to Frank and Pat for the photos and to Ken for sorting out the resolution on the Coxhoe photos.

LMS AGM

At this year`s Ushaw conference it was announced that I was to be the chaplain to the LMS for the North of England, following the LMS` decision to have regional chaplains as well as a national chaplain. When approached about this I asked what it would involve and was told it was to be available for LMS events for the North of England area. As there haven`t been any of these in recent years I thought it sounded safe to accept and enjoy the kudos without any responsibility.

No sooner than I had accepted I was asked to be the speaker at this year`s AGM and then to be assistant priest at a pontifical Mass at Westminster cathedral. I remember LMS AGM`s of old as being rather lively where the speaker might even be heckled by SSPX supporters or worse. However I thought it would be an interesting experience and agreed. I had been assistant priest to bishop Rifan on his British tour of 2004 and thought I could mug it up again. It is one of the benefits of the liturgical revolution that opportunities arise that probably wouldn`t have before `the changes`. For example, if a member of what we used to call the `indult community` (but now I suppose is the EF community), dies, then whereas before the council a person may have had a Requiem consisting of a Low Mass (maybe with hymns) now you get a full sung Mass and sometimes even a Solemn High Mass! So I get to be an assistant priest at a Pontifical High Mass at Westminster cathedral which may not have happened before the changes.

So I set to work on my talk which was to last 20 minutes and talk about the papal visit, the beatification of Cardinal Newman and the 2010 report by the world`s bishops requested by the Vatican on the implementation of Summorum Pontificum. On arriving at Westminster Cathedral Hall I sensed that this was not to be an AGM like I remembered. In the past the Mass was in the morning and the AGM after lunch. Now it is the other way round. This seems to have had the effect of reducing the attendance at the AGM which was about half full. I felt relaxed and after the reports from the secretary, treasurer and chairman, I spoke and found it much less nerve-wracking than I had feared.

We had had a rehearsal for the Mass on Friday afternoon. I had I thought learned my moves over the previous weeks but still found I went blank a couple of times. Bishop Hopes remained very calm throughout. In fact he seemed so assured I asked him afterwards whether he ever celebrates the EF apart from the LMS events at Westminster Cathedral but apparently he doesn`t. An added difficulty was that the bishop did not know by heart many of the prayers for blessing incense or at the foot of the altar etc., so our MC Gordon Dimon had not only to remember the usual things for a pontifical Mass at the faldstool but also ensure that various bits of laminated plastic with extra prayers were brought to the bishop. The pictures however look very good and the one of the consecration I am going to print off and frame!

After Mass bishop Hopes invited the clergy into cathedral house for a cup of tea. Fr Hayward our subdeacon had gone but Fr Irwin and myself went in. Fr Iwrin is a priest at St James, Spanish Place where he says the Sunday EF Low Mass. We also met the cathedral dean who is going to Downside in August to learn the EF.

I was glad of this opportunity to speak at the AGM and assist at the Mass. I thought the Mass was well-attended and enjoyed, amidst the heat and trying to remember what to do next, the singing of Victoria`s O Quam Gloriosum Mass.

I was grateful to Fr Briggs of Chislehurst for giving me accommodation on Friday night and enjoyed going out for a pizza with him and Fr Tim Finigan, Britain`s most eminent Catholic priest blogger. Many thanks to Joseph Shaw for the photos of the Mass.

Now for High Mass tonight with Haydn`s Little Organ Mass. My next visit to Westminster Cathedral will be to concelebrate Mass with Benedict XVI in September!

Glorify God by your life

While on the train to London on Friday ( more about that later) I checked Luke Coppen`s very useful Editor`s Briefing: Morning Catholic must-reads site and found a talk by Archbishop Chaput which I think is well worth reading. I see the NLM has also noticed it. For those who don`t know Archbishop Chaput is the archbishop of Denver in the USA who has been outspoken in defence of pro-life issues.

He acknowledges that he is not personally interested in the Extraordinary Form. He writes:

By the way, for the record, I’m also very grateful that the Holy Father has allowed wider use of the older Tridentine form -- not because I personally prefer it, in fact I find the Novus Ordo, properly celebrated, a much richer expression of worship; but because we need access to all of the Church’s heritage of prayer and faith.

(I`m always intrigued when people speak about the OF `properly celebrated`. When I was at the English College in Rome there were earnest young priests who believed this was the way forward but when it came to them celebrating Mass it didn`t seem very different to the way others celebrated except that they didn`t smile or tell jokes. Some of those priests, but not all of them, are now happy to celebrate the EF.)

Nonetheless the archbishop makes very good points in explaining the Eucharist through the lens of the early Church and its martyrs.

A few good quotes. The first is in reference to a Fr Barron who took up Guardini`s idea that modern man is incapable of a liturgical act:

Barron puts the issue this way: “The project is not shaping the liturgy according to the suppositions of the age, but allowing the liturgy to question and shape the suppositions of any age. Is the modern man incapable of the liturgical act? Probably. But this is no ground for despair. Our goal is not to accommodate the liturgy to the world, but to let the liturgy be itself -- a transformative icon of the ordo of God.”

Barron suggests that in the post-conciliar era, the professional Catholic liturgical establishment opted for the former path, trying to adapt the liturgy to the demands of modern culture. I would agree. And I would add that time has shown this to be a dead end. Trying to engineer the liturgy to be more “relevant” and “intelligible” through a kind of relentless cult of novelty, has only resulted in confusion and a deepening of the divide between believers and the true spirit of the liturgy.

If our liturgies strike us as pedestrian, narrowly parochial, too focused on our own communities and needs; if they lack a powerful sense of the sacred and the transcendent, it’s because we have lost the sense of how our worship participates in the heavenly liturgy.

Some of the worst liturgical ideas since the council have been based on a woolly romanticizing about what the early Christians believed and how they worshipped. It has been argued, for example, that the early Church had no sacramental priesthood and that the Eucharist was celebrated with limited ritual, essentially as a meal shared among friends.
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I won’t take the time here to rebut these claims. The problem with all such nostalgic-primitivist reconstructions can be summed up in one thought: Nobody risks torture and death for a meal with their friends. And torture and death were the frequent penalty for being caught celebrating the Eucharist in the world of the early Church.

The liturgical act becomes possible for modern man when you make your lives a liturgy, when you live your lives liturgically -- as an offering to God in thanksgiving and praise for his gifts and salvation. You are the future of the liturgical renewal

High Masses

We have a small group of priests of the diocese who are interested in the Extraordinary Form and who meet once a month for lunch. This has born fruit in that we have got to know each other better and from that we are co-ordinating our activities. So for the Year Of the Priest it was our intention to have High Mass in each of our parishes which we mostly achieved, with some Masses occurring after the close of the Year. For example, last Monday we had a High Mass at Coxhoe. Fr Swales, the parish priest, celebrated the Mass in thanksgiving for his fiftieth birthday and in thanksgiving for life. Given that the Mass was on a Monday at 12 noon it was good to see a congregation of almost 60 people. Some of these were people I`d not see for a long time. Fr Swales is a regular celebrant at the Sunday Mass at St Dominic`s, Newcastle and people from that Mass often make the journey to Co. Durham on a Thursday for his regular EF Mass at 12 noon. However that particular group seldom come to any other EF Masses in the diocese so it was a long time since I had seen many of them.

The Mass went very well and I hope Frank might send some pictures. We are becoming more familiar with High Mass. There will be another opportunity this Tuesday when Frs Swales and Phillips are joining me at Longbenton for High Mass for the feast of SS Peter and Paul. The next occasion will probably be the Mass at Brinkburn in September but I hope that after that we will continue to organise High Masses and go to new venues.

I`m a great believer in frequent High Masses. It was therefore interesting to read what actually happened before the Council in parishes in Lancaster in a post which Fr Paul Harrison made on his blog a while back. Fr Harrison is the diocesan archivist and revealed that his search of visitation reports for Lancaster diocese from 1924-1962 showed for two of the biggest parishes the following:

St Ignatius a very vibrant Jesuit parish in Preston, which usually had 6 priests. High Mass was on the principle feasts only and Missa Cantata once a month.

English Martyrs an equally vibrant secular parish which also had 6 priests. High Mass was, again, only on the principle feasts of the year. Missa Cantata was offered "only seldomly"

So it seems that liturgical life in even the best equipped parishes was very impoverished. It is consoling in a way to know that even before the Council I would have been dissatisfied with the liturgical life of the Catholic Church in England!

Moving Forward Together

On Saturday the latest in the series of consultations of the diocese by the bishop took place at St Robert`s school, Washington. There is a report on the day here. Readers may be interested to look at the topics discussed and see the feedback that came from the meeting. You will find this here, here and here. My favourite suggestion was that we have `locally grown priests`, which I thought was a very odd remark for a number of reasons! Needless to say no-one mentioned the Extraordinary Form ( we are used to that) but there was some discussion about the new translation which didn`t seem hostile at all.

Earliest icons of Ss Peter and Paul found

There is a story out today that the oldest known icons of Ss Peter and Paul, dating to the second half of the fourth century, have been found in a catacomb in Rome. I`m quite interested in this as following the Pantocrator at Longbenton, the plan is to have an Peter and Paul on either side of Christ. I hope we see a photo of both the saints in the newly-found icon soon

A good idea

In the days when I used to go on the Paris to Chartres pilgrimage the question used to arise among the British pilgrims about whether this could be done at home. We don`t have the numbers of faithful attached to Tradition that exist in France and so anything would be on a small scale but the organisation would still be formidable.

However I was pleased to get an email to see that there is going to be an attempt to launch something similar in England by Paul Smeaton. I think it is particularly appropriate that there will be a Mass at Downham Market.

Here is the text in full.

Dear Friends,

With the help of Joseph Shaw and the Latin Mass Society I have been organising a pilgrimage from Ely to Walsingham over from Friday 20th August to Sunday 22nd August. The pilgrimage has been inspired by the traditional pilgrimage which takes place each Pentecost from Paris to Chartres and will follow a similar three day model.

As this is the first time we have attempted anything like this in England, as well as a spiritual journey, this will no doubt be something of a learning experience. For that reason we are limiting this year's pilgrimage to thirty pilgrims and adults only. We hope that this will be the start of great things.That being said we expect that this year will be a rich and beautiful expression of the treasure's of our Church. We are blessed to have a priest walking the entire pilgrimage with us and there will be sung Mass in the traditional form each day: in Downham Market on Friday evening, in the chapel at Oxburgh Hall on the Saturday and in Walsingham on Sunday. We would love for you to join us.

What do you need to know?

- Pilgrims will meet at Ely campsite on the evening of Thursday 19th August. All pilgrims must have a tent to stay in. We will begin walking early on Friday morning.

- Pilgrims will be required to bring their own food. Water will be provided at regular intervals.

- There will be a bus that will take your main bag with tent etc in each day. Pilgrims are advised to bring a day bag to carry food, water etc.

- The final Sunday Mass will take place in Walsingham at 2.30pm on Sunday 22nd August. Following the Mass a coach will be available to bring pilgrims back to Ely.

- Should pilgrims be unable to walk for whatever reason there will be some vehichle support. However, as this first pilgrimage we are trying to minimise potential problems and ask that pilgrims wishing to come this year be confident walkers without any major health difficulties.

- Pilgrims will be asked to help cover the costs of the pilgrimage and pay for the camping facilities. The total cost of each pilgrim will be £60. We ask that pilgrims please pay what they can afford.

Should you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact me on paulsmeaton@hotmail.co.uk

In Christ,

Paul

I have other plans in August this year but would like to support this next year if it happens again.