Mass of Ages Summer 2021

Mass of Ages The quarterly magazine of the Latin Mass Society

Our Lady of Glastonbury Farewell to the King of Catholic Latin The Irish churches of George Goldie Plus: news, views, online Mass listings and nationwide reports

Issue 208 – Summer 2021 – FREE

CLASSIFIED

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SUMMER 2021

Contents

CONTENTS

5 Chairman’s Message

Joseph Shaw on the positive role of the ancient liturgy 6 LMS Year Planner – Notable events 7 Liturgical calendar 8 John Henry Newman Appeal Help save the Cardinal Saint’s unique collection of some thirteen thousand books as well as the room where he worked, studied, and latterly said Mass 10 Letters

Readers have their say 11 Our Father

Julia Jones reviews a new book by Sr Claire Waddelove OSB 12 Sisters of the Cross Alan Frost looks at the remarkable life of the Venerable Elizabeth Prout CP 14 Roman report

Alberto Carosa remembers Msgr Richard Soseman 16 Reports from around the country

What’s happening where you are 23 Family matters

James Preece on the vaccine dilemma facing Catholics 24 Art and devotion Caroline Farey on a picture of Mary that includes all three stages of salvation history 26 Fr Reggie Foster and his book

Joseph Shaw bids farewell to the King of Catholic Latin 28 Architecture

Paul Waddington on the Irish churches of George Goldie 30 Our Lady of Glastonbury Dom Bede Rowe, Rector of the Shrine, on a living Benedictine tradition in the West Country 32 Battles with the demonic

Mary O’Regan remembers Malachi Martin 33 Mass listings 39 The scholar priest

Charles A. Coulombe on linguist and adventurer Adrian Fortescue 41 Wine Sebastian Morello visits the Sharpham winery in Devon and recommends a visit to St Mary’s Totnes 42 Communist infiltration?

Kevin J. Symonds looks at the curious history of Dr Bella Dodd and the

Catholic Church 44 Where have our vocations gone?

Asks Fr Christopher Basden 46 Crossword 46 Classified advertisements The Latin Mass Society 11-13 Macklin Street, London WC2B 5NH Tel: 020 7404 7284 editor@lms.org.uk Mass of Ages No. 208 Our Lady of Glastonbury. © Fr Bede Rowe

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Due to the considerable volume of emails and letters received at Mass of Ages it is regrettably not always possible to reply to all correspondents.

25 28 PATRONS: Sir Adrian Fitzgerald, Bt; Rt Hon. Lord Gill; Sir James Macmillan, CBE; Lord Moore of Etchingham; Prof. Thomas Pink.

COMMITTEE: Dr Joseph Shaw – Chairman; Kevin Jones – Secretary; David Forster – Treasurer; Paul Beardsmore – Vice President; Paul Waddington – Vice President; Alisa Kunitz-Dick; Antonia Robinson; Nicholas Ross; Alastair Tocher; Roger Wemyss Brooks.

Registered UK Charity No. 248388

MASS OF AGES: Editor: Tom Quinn Design: GADS Ltd Printers: Cambrian DISCLAIMER: Please note that the views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the Latin Mass Society or the Editorial Board. Great care is taken to credit photographs and seek permission before publishing, though this is not always possible. If you have a query regarding copyright, please contact the Editor. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission.

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OBITUARY

Heading Text

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CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

For the good of souls Joseph Shaw on the positive role of the ancient liturgy

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s I write, the Latin and right to work so that the divine Mass Society’s message of salvation more and more enforced inactivity, reaches all people in every age and in as far as public events every land.

What makes us think that the have been concerned, is coming to an end, and I Church’s ancient liturgy, specifically, hope our supporters will has a positive role to play in spreading not need too much urging to join us at the divinum salutis nuntium, the divine Masses and all sorts of special events message of salvation? Well, in addition which we are organising. There are to whatever personal experience we many such events, listed conveniently in may have, this liturgy enjoys the hearty this edition of Mass of Ages in the events endorsement of the Saints, Popes, and Doctors, of the ages. That is enough pages and also in the Classified section. to show that our work is legitimate.

I know Mass of Ages is read by many It doesn’t have to be the best possible non-members. For what end, such means to spread the Gospel. The Church readers may ask, is all this busy activity is not a Utilitarian institution, where directed? For the good of the Latin Mass people are only allowed to do what will Society? No. We have no share-holders bring about the best possible results. to reward; the Society exists for an A Catholic can promote some old end beyond itself. In order to promote devotion, like that of the Holy Name, or a particular form of the liturgy? Not some relatively obscure saint, like the quite: even the liturgy is a means to Society’s Welsh Patron St Richard Gwyn, an end. What we are concerned about, or some neglected place of worship, as ultimately, is the glory of God and the St Francis rebuilt the little church of San sanctification of our fellow creatures. If Damiano, and be doing God’s work. that sounds a little beyond our pay-grade, I should explain that we aim to do this in the very simple ways that lay people have used over many centuries, when they have promoted devotions, helped with the liturgy in one way or another, and given or received instruction in the Faith.

For these are among the things that lay people can do to make real their participation in the spread of the Gospel, a participation incumbent on every baptised Catholic.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law expresses it this way: Can. 210 All the Christian faithful must direct their efforts to lead a holy life and to promote the growth of the Church an d its c ont inual sanctification, according to their own condition.

'Got any better idea?'

Can. 211 All the Christian from Cracks in the Clouds by Dom Hubert Van Zeller OSB faithful have the duty (erstwhile Brother Choleric), 1976

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We promote the ancient Mass: it is a legitimate liturgical form, we feel drawn to it, and we know it helps others, too, grow in holiness, as it has for so many centuries. That is all that needs to be said.

I have been stimulated to think the matter through in this way by the American Jesuit Fr Thomas Reese, who has recently penned a list of things he would like to see happen, including the following item: The church needs to be clear that it wants the unreformed liturgy to disappear and will only allow it out of pastoral kindness to older people who do not understand the need for change. Children and young people should not be allowed to attend such Masses.

Fr Reese’s liturgical preferences are well known; what is interesting is that he expresses himself in such an extreme way. It is not enough, for him, to promote what he thinks needs to be promoted: he has the means, one would think, to do that to his heart’s content. But no, he is like the rich man in the prophet Nathan’s parable: he ignores his own resources and seeks to kill his poor neighbour’s one ewe-lamb (2 Sam 12:4).

This was the attitude of not a few influential people in the Church over the decades, and the Latin Mass Society has long done its work in the teeth of opposition. Times have changed, however, and it is now rare to hear such silly stuff. When we do, it says more about the speaker than about the ancient Mass, which Pope Francis welcomes into St Peter’s every year for the annual Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage. Our work can now be done in a spirit of harmony and serenity, not for the good of any institution, or as if there were some puerile competition going on between liturgical forms, but simply for the good of souls.

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EVENTS

LMS Year Planner – Notable Events At the time of going to press the following events are planned.

ST TARCISIUS SERVER TRAINING DAY: Saturday

knowledge. Reduced rates for clergy, religious, and seminarians for the Latin course. With Fr John Hunwicke, Fr Richard Bailey, and Matthew Spencer. Savio House, Ingersley Rd, Bollington, Macclesfield SK10 5RW. More details and booking through the LMS website.

ST CATHERINE’S TRUST SUMMER SCHOOL FOR CHILDREN: Sunday 1 to Saturday 7 August, at St Cassian’s

LMS WALKING PILGRIMAGE TO WALSINGHAM: We

24 July from 10.30am in St Mary Moorfields, Eldon Street, London, EC2M 7LS. Men and boys will be able to learn all roles for Low Mass and Sung Mass, and High Mass if there is demand.

Booking is required, see our website for details.

Centre, Wallingtons Road, Kintbury, Berkshire RG17 9SP. Book through www.stcatherinestrust.org

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING AND HIGH MASS:

Saturday 14 August. Our Annual General Meeting will take place in Westminster Cathedral Hall at 11.30am, followed by High Mass at the High Altar of the Cathedral at 2.30pm. A buffet lunch which must be booked in advance - will be provided for paid-up members. See our website or call the LMS Office to book.

LMS LATIN & NEW TESTAMENT GREEK RESIDENTIAL COURSE: 16-21 August (Mon to Sat). Latin for beginners and

plan to hold our annual pilgrimage from Ely to Walsingham over the August Bank Holiday weekend, 26-29 August. If you wish to take part, please register via our website. For those unable to undertake the walk but would like to take part in a day pilgrimage, a coach will leave central London on the Sunday, arriving in Walsingham in time to meet the walking pilgrims for High Mass in the Chapel of Reconciliation. To reserve a seat on the coach, please see our website.

MISSA CANTATA IN SNAVE: Our annual visit to

St Augustine’s Church in Snave, on Romney Marsh, takes place on Saturday, 25 September 2021 at 12noon, by kind permission of The Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust, who are entrusted with the care of this, now redundant, church.

intermediate students; Greek for students with some basic

ST TARCISIUS SERVER TRAINING DAY: Saturday

25 September from 10.30am in St James Spanish Place, 22 George Street, London, W1U 3QY. Men and boys will be able to learn all roles for Low Mass and Sung Mass, and High Mass if there is demand. Booking is required, see our website for details.

GUILD OF ST CLARE: AUTUMN 2021 SEWING RETREAT AT DOUAI ABBEY, 12-14th November, with

Fr Tim Finigan. Douai Abbey, Upper Woolhampton, Reading, RG7 5TQ. Booking open on the LMS website.

The Residential Training Conference for Priests and Servers planned for Low Week has been postponed to a, yet to be confirmed, date later in the year.

NEWS Write for us!

If you enjoy reading Mass of Ages and feel there is an article you would like to write for us do let us know.

In the first instance contact the Editor with an outline of your proposed article letting us know why you are the person to write it and with details of any photographs or illustrations you are able to supply.

Contact our Editor Tom Quinn at editor@lms.org.uk

FACTFILE Details of all our events can be found on our

website, together with booking and payment facilities where applicable. Go to lms.org.uk

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LITURGICAL CALENDAR

Liturgical calendar MAY 2021 Sun 9 V SUNDAY after EASTER II Cl W Mon 10 S ANTONINUS B C lll Cl W Tue 11 SS PHILIP & JAMES Aps II Cl R Wed 12 VIGIL of the ASCENSION II Cl W Thu 13 ASCENSION of OUR LORD I Cl W Fri 14 FERIA IV Cl W Sat 15 S JOHN BAPTIST de la SALLE C III CI W Sun 16 SUNDAY after the ASCENSION of OUR LORD II Cl W Mon 17 S PASCHAL BAYLON C lll Cl W Tue 18 S VENANTIUS M III CI R Wed 19 S PETER CELESTINE P C III CI W Thu 20 S BERNADINE of SIENA C III Cl W Fri 21 FERIA IV Cl W Sat 22 VIGIL of PENTECOST (Whitsun Eve) I Cl R Sun 23 WHIT SUNDAY (Pentecost) I Cl R Mon 24 WHIT MONDAY I Cl R Tue 25 WHIT TUESDAY I Cl R Wed 26 WHIT WEDNESDAY (Ember Day) I Cl R Thu 27 WHIT THURSDAY I Cl R Fri 28 WHIT FRIDAY (Ember Day) I Cl R Sat 29 WHIT SATURDAY (Ember Day) I Cl R Sun 30 FEAST of the MOST HOLY TRINITY I Cl W Mon 31 BVM QUEEN II Cl W

JUNE 2021 Tue 1 S ANGELA MERICI V lll Cl W Wed 2 FERIA IV Cl G Thu 3 CORPUS CHRISTI I Cl W Fri 4 S FRANCIS CARACCIOLO C lll Cl W Sat 5 S BONIFACE B M III Cl R Sun 6 II SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 7 FERIA IV Cl G Tue 8 FERIA IV Cl G Wed 9 FERIA lV Cl G Thu 10 S MARGARET Q W III Cl W Fri 11 MOST SACRED HEART of JESUS I Cl W Sat 12 S JOHN of SAN FACONDO C III CI W Sun 13 III SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 14 S BASIL the GREAT B C D lll Cl W Tue 15 FERIA IV Cl G Wed 16 FERIA IV Cl G Thu 17 S GREGORY BARBARIGO B C lll Cl W Fri 18 S EPHREM the SYRIAN Deacon C D III Cl W Sat 19 S JULIANA FALCONIERI V lll Cl W Sun 20 IV SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 21 S ALOYSIUS GONZAGA C III Cl W Tue 22 S PAULINUS B C III CI W Wed 23 VIGIL of the NATIVITY of S JOHN the BAPTIST II Cl V Thu 24 NATIVITY of S JOHN the BAPTIST I Cl W Fri 25 S WILLIAM Ab III Cl W Sat 26 SS JOHN & PAUL MM III CI R Sun 27 V SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 28 VIGIL of SS PETER & PAUL Aps II Cl V Tue 29 SS PETER & PAUL Aps I Cl R Wed 30 COMMEMORATION of S PAUL Ap III Cl R

JULY 2021 Thu 1 MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD of OLJC I Cl R Fri 2 VISITATION of the BVM II Cl W Sat 3 S IRENAEUS B M III CI R Sun 4 VI SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 5 S ANTHONY MARY ZACCARIA C lll Cl W Tue 6 FERIA IV Cl G Wed 7 SS CYRIL & METHODIUS BB CC III Cl W Thu 8 S ELIZABETH Q W llI Cl W Fri 9 SS JOHN FISHER B & THOMAS MORE MM I Cl R Sat 10 SEVEN HOLY BROTHERS MM & SS RUFINA & SECUNDA VV MM III Cl R Sun 11 VII SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 12 S JOHN GUALBERT Ab lll Cl W

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Tue 13 FERIA IV Cl G Wed 14 S BONAVENTURE B C D III Cl W Thu 15 S HENRY Emperor C lll Cl W Fri 16 FERIA IV Cl G Sat 17 OUR LADY’S SATURDAY IV Cl W Sun 18 VIII SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 19 S VINCENT de PAUL C lll Cl W Tue 20 S JEROME EMILIANI C III Cl W Wed 21 S LAWRENCE of BRINDISI C D III Cl W Thu 22 S MARY MAGDALEN Penitent III Cl W Fri 23 S APOLLINARIS B M III Cl R Sat 24 OUR LADY’S SATURDAY IV Cl W Sun 25 IX SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 26 S ANNE MOTHER of the BVM ll Cl W Tue 27 FERIA IV Cl G Wed 28 SS NAZARIUS & CELSUS MM & VICTOR I P M & INNOCENT I P C III Cl R Thu 29 S MARTHA V lll Cl W Fri 30 FERIA IV Cl G Sat 31 S IGNATIUS C III Cl W

AUGUST 2021 Sun 1 X SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 2 S ALPHONSUS MARY de LIGUORI B C D III Cl W Tue 3 FERIA IV Cl G Wed 4 S DOMINIC C III Cl W Thu 5 DEDICATION of S MARY of the SNOWS III Cl W Fri 6 TRANSFIGURATION of OLJC II Cl W Sat 7 S CAJETAN C III Cl W Sun 8 XI SUNDAY after PENTECOST II Cl G Mon 9 VIGIL of S LAWRENCE M IIl Cl V Tue 10 S LAWRENCE M II Cl R Wed 11 FERIA IV Cl G Thu 12 S CLARE V III Cl W Fri 13 FERIA IV Cl G Sat 14 VIGIL of the ASSUMPTION of the BVM Il CI V

Please pray for the souls of all members who have died recently Requiescant in Pace Wilfrid Elkin (Priest) John Fallon (Priest) Brendan Hoban (Priest) Patricia Moore Paul Sanders (Priest) Cecil Roberts John Tams Every effort is made to ensure that this list is accurate and up-to-date. However, if you know of a recently deceased member whose name has not, so far, appeared on our prayer memorial, then please contact the LMS, see page 3 for contact details.

The LMS relies heavily on legacies to support its income. We are very grateful to the following who remembered the Society in their Will: Anthony Gilbey.

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FEATURE

John Henry Newman Appeal Help save the Cardinal Saint’s unique collection of some thirteen thousand books as well as the room where he worked, studied, and latterly said Mass

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ver since its foundation by St Philip Neri in sixteenth century Rome, the Congregation of the Oratory has paid particular attention to celebrating the sacred liturgy with dignity and devotion.

Established during the CounterReformation, the Oratory has always stood for what is Roman and unashamedly Catholic. This romanità was expressed from the outset by Italianate Baroque architecture and decorative arts, with liturgical ceremonies accompanied by music of the late Renaissance, by composers such as Palestrina and Victoria, both disciples of St Philip.

The saint required that High Mass and Vespers were celebrated on all Sundays and festivals in his lovely church, the Chiesa Nuova, with many Low Masses offered on its side altars. Thus, inspired by uplifting worship and hushed prayer, the awe-struck faithful would be drawn heavenwards. The sacred liturgy and the frequent reception of the sacraments were the chief means St Philip employed for sanctifying daily life and winning souls for Christ. He impressed this on his sons, and the Fathers of the Oratory try to continue this particular apostolate.

One of St Philip’s most illustrious sons is John Henry Newman, the Victorian cardinal-saint. When Newman founded his Oratory in Birmingham in the nineteenth century, a reticent mood left over from the penal days still enshrouded English Catholicism.

High Mass, processions, and solemn functions were still a rare sight, but the efforts of Newman and his Oratorians helped to breathe new life into the faith in these Isles, bringing about ‘the second spring.’

In the Birmingham Oratory’s first church and the succeeding one built in

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the Edwardian Baroque style, Holy Mass has been consistently celebrated with splendour and devotion. The Oratory’s worship and music continued faithful to the Roman tradition up until the liturgical pluralism ushered in by the Second Vatican Council.

Perhaps it was the musical repertoire and the style of the building, as well as the prayers of Saints Philip and John Henry, that prevented the worst excesses of the so-called ‘liturgical renewal’ from taking hold. The old form of Vespers continued on Sundays, while a new and adapted form of High Mass was offered for some four decades.

The impulse to begin re-introducing the Traditional Mass emerged here some fifteen years ago. At first this was on a very modest scale, but over the years our commitment to it has grown gradually and without polemic, in a manner which we believe is proper to St Philip’s Oratory.

As things have developed, every solemn celebration is now in the Extraordinary Form: High Mass every Sunday and major feast day, and Low Mass every evening.

If you come into our church on weekday mornings, you will also see individual Low Masses in the usus antiquior being offered on the side altars.

Since the partial easing of the current lockdown, the attendance on Sundays at the Extraordinary Form High Mass has increased to the point that we have been obliged to provide an additional Sunday Low Mass in this Form, so as to accommodate the increasing demand from young people and families.

St John Henry Newman loved the Tridentine Mass more than anything else in the world. He celebrated it every day of his priestly life, until the last time on Christmas Day 1889, when his health began to fail him. In addition to our other pastoral responsibilities, the Fathers are

more than content to make available that form of the Mass which our English founder loved so dearly.

Oratory House contains a further precious Newman patrimony: his own unique collection of some thirteen thousand books in a splendid library which he himself had a part in designing, as well as his own room, where he worked, studied, and latterly said Mass. Recently, these precious relics have been put under threat. The ingenious lantern roof on the library began to lean and collapse, due to rotting structural beams. In 2020 the threat of the roof falling into the library, and in turn, into the Newman shrine below, plus aggressive water damage from leaks and damp seeping into Newman’s personal room, demanded that work begin urgently.

The lantern roof is now being rebuilt and the surrounding roof area reconstructed, to improve drainage.

Newman’s collection of books has been professionally cleaned, listed, and put into safe storage for the duration of the

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work. Many books were badly damaged by damp and have needed specialist care. Conservators have also been at work in Newman’s room. The Victorian wallpaper has been treated and in places painstakingly reconstructed. This is in addition to repairs to the flooring, altar furnishings, and the cardinalatial baldacchino hanging over the altar where St John Henry said his daily Mass after being made a Cardinal in May 1879.

The work of restoration began seven months ago, and still continues. The entire cost is in excess of £1 million. Generous donations plus a significant contribution from the Community’s private resources have already raised £650,000. We urgently need to raise another £400,000 to pay for the work to be completed.

We are asking you to help us to protect Newman’s personal room and his library, a library which shaped his mind and inspired his heart. This investment is to preserve Newman’s unique legacy both for the Catholic world and the wider context of all those who value his genius.

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FACTFILE Any donation, great or small, will help us to achieve this.

We have created a home for our Appeal online, at

appeal.birminghamoratory.org.uk

Here, you can see the various initiatives underway as part of our fundraising drive and some unique ways through which you could make a contribution.

If you wish to make a donation via bank transfer, please contact

appeal@birminghamoratory.org.uk

Or you can send a cheque made out to ‘The Oratory’, addressing your envelope to:

The Newman Appeal, 141 Hagley Road, Birmingham, United Kingdom.

B16 8UE Fr Ignatius Harrison, Provost. Fr Anton Guziel, Vice-Provost.

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LETTERS

Letters to the Editor The language of Our Lord In his letter, ‘The Silver Screen’ (spring 2021 Mass of Ages) Matt Showering raises the interesting question of the language in which the conversation between Our Lord and Pontius Pilate recorded in John 18:33-38 took place. Personally, I am convinced that it was in Greek.

Greek was the universal language of government, law and commerce throughout the eastern half of the Roman Empire.

Moreover, every educated Roman was taught to read, write and speak it. As procurator of a province in the eastern Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate would certainly have spoken it fluently. It was a basic necessity of the job.

There is no direct evidence that Our Lord could speak Greek.

However, there is certainly evidence, from the New Testament itself, that some working class Judaeans at least could do so.

The Gospels of Mark, Luke and John were all written in Greek, as were the letters of Peter, James and John. Luke may have been a doctor but Peter, James and John certainly began life as fishermen. St Paul was a humble tentmaker by profession, but he was able to bring the gospel to cities in the Greek world in their own language, as well as to write letters in fluent Greek to the new Christian communities which he founded. I can well believe therefore that, even taking into account only His purely human nature, Our Lord learned to speak Greek as part of his basic education.

If I am right then the text of John 18:33-38 may well preserve not only the language in which the conversation took place, but the very words of the conversation itself.

Philip Goddard Via email .....

I was delighted to read Matt Showering’s letter where he considers whether Jesus did, in fact, speak in Latin at His interrogation by Pilate, as portrayed in the film ‘The Passion of the Christ’.

For a start, Jesus is ‘The Word’, and, being God, would have had all languages as His to command, if He had had need of them. In the Koran it states that Jesus spoke from birth. (As an aside, Jesus is mentioned more than 187 times in the Koran).

He spoke Greek, so why not Latin? We know He spoke Greek, because, for example, in the dialogue with Peter, where He questions him three times, ‘Do you love Me?’, St John’s Greek uses two words for ‘love’.

The first, which Jesus uses, is ‘agape’ - unconditional, selfless love: ‘Agapas me?’ When Peter replies, in each of the three replies, he uses the word ‘philia’, friendship love. So, Jesus, the third time, uses Peter’s choice of word, and says, ‘Phileis me?’

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Clearly, He and His apostles, moving in a cosmopolitan society, would have, on occasion, conversed in any of the three most popular languages of the day. (Galilee, their home district, was particularly full of foreign influences.) And Pilate would obviously have been more at ease with his own language than with Aramaic or Hebrew.

Sister Susan Asher Via email .....

Why rush the Mass?

When I first started to attend the TLM after Summorum Pontificum, I thought it a blessing that we had priests who also celebrated the NO in the vernacular, since it meant they took as much care over the words as the actions of the Mass.

However, as the years have gone by, it seems that familiarity with the Latin seems to lead inevitably to gabbling through the prayers at a rate few priests would do in the vernacular.

I can remember the pre-Vatican II days when people joked about priests who could ‘get through’ Mass in under 15 minutes – we joked, but were not edified. The prayers of the Traditional Mass are commended for their richness, so why rush them? Perhaps that is one reason so many Catholics welcomed the introduction in the 1950s of the ‘dialogue mass’ (Missa recitativa) – if the congregation is joining in the Gloria and the Creed, they have to be taken at a slower, more reflective, pace. When hearing the Last Gospel being read, there is a world of difference between a familiarity with Latin that sounds as though a speed record is being sought, and a familiarity that sounds as though the reader is thinking about what he is reading.

I make these observations not in an attitude of criticism or complaint – but of bewilderment. Given the richness of the traditional prayers, why have haste and speed become the hallmarks of praying in Latin?

Clare Underwood Via email

Letters should be addressed to: The Editor, Mass of Ages, 11-13 Macklin Street, London WC2B 5NH email editor@lms.org.uk Letters may be edited for reasons of space

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COMMENT

Our Father Julia Jones reviews a new book

by Sr Claire Waddelove OSB

SUMMER 2021

By Adrian Dulston

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T

he Our Father, a prayer Catholics usually learn at a very young age, appears in the Rosary, the liturgy and on other everyday occasions. Perhaps at a time when some of us are a little battered by the turbulent world of social media, where we recoil at another mention of the word, ‘unprecedented’ and all are under additional and often unseen strains, it is natural to turn towards the central prayers of the Church, to tradition and to scripture.

This book, written by a contemplative Benedictine nun, provides a perspective from a way of life, which has held steady for 1400 years, whatever the world may throw at it. Governed by The Rule of St Benedict, who included this prayer in the Office, he says in Chapter 13, ‘Assuredly, the celebration of Lauds and Vespers must never pass without the superior’s reciting the entire Lord’s Prayer at the end for all to hear, because thorns of contention are likely to spring up.’

Sr Claire Waddelove’s book is the fruit, as she says in the Author’s Preface, ‘… of personal reading and participation in the Church’s liturgy at Mass and the Divine Office in a contemplative, monastic community.’ We do indeed benefit from her considerable reading and life as a contemplative, as she gives us choice quotes from the Fathers of the Church, popes and saints. Like all great teachers, she has done the hard work for us. She draws out the most apposite quotes and stitches them together into a rich tapestry; a style reminiscent of some papal encyclicals, where the voice of the author is apparently absent, whilst being present in the choice of material and artistry of arrangement.

The book makes each clause of the prayer a chapter, provides a commentary on each and then opens out into biblical references, all helpfully provided in full. In Chapter III, Thy Kingdom Come, she takes us through the ideas of the Kingship of God in the Old Testament, the Annunciation as a fulfilment of ancient prophecies, before arriving at the New Testament proclamation of the Kingdom, the call to repentance and Our Lord’s illustration of the Kingdom through the parables. On evil in the Church she writes, ‘ …the parables illustrate the co-existence of good and bad

A Catholic Academy for St Mary’s Warrington

in the field and in the net. This is a warning against complacency. Simply being a member of the Church does not guarantee a good life or a good end. In troubled times on the other hand, when evil in the Church is painfully exposed, these parables give reassurance. Such evil is rightly shocking to us; it is no surprise to God. It has all been foreseen and foretold. It is, therefore, no reason to despair of the Church, or abandon her.’ (p.44) Her tone is clear, direct and steady. In the present time, where there is so much dissent and disagreement, one might say refreshing.

A slim volume, this is a book ideal both for those with much time for spiritual reading as well as for those for whom time is very short. It would be an excellent gift for someone enquiring into the Faith or for a Confirmation candidate. Perhaps it can be best summed up by Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB, who writes in the Foreword, ‘Put simply, this is good, wholesome stuff.

May it find many readers.’

Our Father: A Biblical Meditation on the Lord’s Prayer is published by Gracewing and is available from the LMS bookshop £14.85 (incl. p&p).

few families in Bedfordshire took the initiative to bring a successful US model of Classical Catholic education to the UK and founded Regina Caeli Academy UK, with pastoral support from the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter. In its second year, the number of families using the Academy has already doubled, with more families joining and moving to the area this year in anticipation of September 2021. Full details about Regina Caeli Academy, including an introductory video, fees, timetables and curriculum, are available at www.rcahybrid.org.uk.

Given the growing community in Warrington, and answering demand from local parents, we would very much like to start a centre at St Mary’s Warrington, with God’s help, from September 2021.

The Academy offers a full Classical Curriculum, completely grounded on the magisterium of the Catholic Church, and a community of Catholic families. Trained, paid teachers provide two days per week of onsite tuition. For the other days of the week, comprehensive study plans are provided for parents to follow with their children. Parents benefit from structure, accountability and community, and their children gain Catholic friends for life.

Over the past 18 years, thousands of children have been educated with this curriculum in the US, so parents can be confident that it is a tried and tested system of Catholic education which results in robust qualifications, a lifelong love of learning and, most importantly, a deep-rooted faith.

If you are a parent who is interested in the Warrington RCA for your own children, please email Michael and Aileen Seymour, the Warrington coordinators of Regina Caeli Academy, at TheAcademyStMarys@ gmail.com giving your contact details and your children’s ages/current school years.

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FEATURE

Sisters of the Cross Alan Frost looks at the remarkable life of the Venerable Elizabeth Prout CP

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n December 1994, the Archbishop of Liverpool, Derek Warlock, wnet to a church in St Helen’s, Lancashire, to officiate at the formal beginning of the Cause for the Canonisation of Sr Elizabeth Prout, some 130 years after her death. In July 2008, his successor, Patrick Kelly, went to the same church, St Anne’s, in the district of Sutton, where her body lies, to formally complete the process in England before all the documentation was despatched to Rome.

Though she spent much of her life and started her mission among the (mostly Irish) poor of Manchester, Elizabeth was actually born in Shrewsbury on September 2, 1820 and brought up an Anglican. She left her birthplace when her father, a skilled cooper, was made redundant. Another brewery employed him, but in the Staffordshire town of Stone. It was to the Crown Inn in this town that one Bl Dominic Barberi, having recently arrived in England as a missionary priest of the Passionist Order, came to give talks on the Catholic Faith.

The 21-year-old Elizabeth, who lived just two miles from his Aston Hall residence, was most impressed.

With another Passionist priest, Fr Gaudentius Rossi, he would have taught and instructed Elizabeth at the same time as he was giving instruction to, and bringing into the Catholic Church, the mighty figure of John Henry Newman.

He was also in regular contact with another outstanding daughter of the Church, Mother Margaret Hallahan, who re-established the Dominican Sisters in England.

Indeed, the Convent she founded in Stone is the Motherhouse of the Order today, and in its grounds is the chapel of St Anne founded by Fr Barberi as a church and schoolhouse. Undoubtedly Elizabeth Prout would have known this chapel well.

Despite her parents’ disapproval, she converted to the Catholic faith and wished to become a religious. Fr Rossi advised her of a teaching post in Manchester, which she accepted, and so it was that she moved to the city that

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was the engine-room of the Industrial Revolution, in September 1849.

She soon found that the social conditions she encountered were much worse than anything she had ever experienced. Though her accommodation in a house next to St Chad’s Church in Cheetham Hill (now home to Manchester’s Oratorians) was in a quite respectable area, she would be teaching in the district of Ancoats, a far poorer area. To get there she would pass through the most notorious slum area of the city. The children she would teach came from these slum areas.

Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 book Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life gives a vivid description of the appalling, unsanitary conditions in which these children lived.

Yet, shocked as she must have been, Elizabeth rose to the challenge, such was her spiritual strength. She was guided by Passionist principles and helped by another of their priests, Fr Ignatius Spencer.

Any new Institute or Order such as the one set up by Elizabeth had to be accepted officially by the Church; it would need a Rule to be formulated and

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FEATURE ultimately approval from Rome. The very timing of the beginning of her work was as sensitive as it was relevant. On the political front there were the activities of the Chartists agitating the masses, while in 1850 the formal restoration of a structured Catholic Church caused great protest from protestant groups.

Elizabeth herself, as she gradually acquired helpers in promoting the Faith in the mills and factories (girls she taught to make and repair clothes and to read and write), became a target of Evangelical anti-Catholic preachers.

Nonetheless she persevered and was able to open her first convent, by St Chad’s, in August 1851, less than two years after leaving Stone.

Her first companions worked as seamstresses in a mill while she was teaching in Ancoats. It was poorly paid work, so the convent began in considerable poverty, and had the difficult distinction of needing to be self-financing, so its members had to be wage-earners. On the other hand, Elizabeth had succeeded in obtaining a substantial education grant after a report by a schools’ inspector, and her dedication to and example set in Catholic teaching gained the support of the Bishop.

In November 1852, Fr Rossi came to the convent to present the seven members of the community with black habits and the name ‘The Catholic Sisters of the Holy Family’. Her followers and helpers wore an identifying badge or Sign, Jesu XPI Passio, which adorned the first religious habits to be worn publicly in England since the Reformation. To this, later, they added the letters JMJ. Before long, they outgrew their base in Cheetham Hill and were given property, including a school, in the Levenshulme district of Manchester.

Shortly before this, Mother Mary Joseph, as Elizabeth became, had set up a school for the poor in an Irish quarter of Ancoats, near the city centre, which she named after St Joseph. For all their poverty, the children bedecked in their Sunday best, presented a spectacle that drew the crowds onto the streets in the early days of what became the traditional Manchester Whit Walks.

The selfless devotion Elizabeth and the Sisters showed led to her being asked numerous times to set up schools and convents elsewhere. Realistically they could only take on a few of these, though at one of them, Mother Mary Joseph herself re-settled. This was the St Anne’s School in Sutton. There were to

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be setbacks to contend with, including her own failing health, but she was cheered by her parents becoming Catholics late in life, and by news from Rome in 1863 that the Rule for her new Order had finally been accepted. News, in fact, brought back personally by Fr Spencer. Relieved, and assuring her Sisters at the last, Elizabeth died the following year on January 11, at Sutton, to the sound of the Angelus bell. Fr Spencer was at her bedside to give her the Last Rites.

In her lifetime she established the name of her Order steadily in the northwest of England through its educational foundations. Mother Mary Joseph was also very keen on providing homes and a safe base for the factory girls taught by the Sisters, who helped with making and repairing clothes for the poor. The community she founded continued to grow and her life-long close association with the Passionists was recognised in the bestowing upon the Order, shortly

after she died, the title Sisters of the Cross and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. These Sisters would continue to set up convents and schools, notably (from 1899-1967) beside what is now the Shrine Church of St Mary in Warrington, run by the FSSP. This link has remarkably been revived, as these buildings have recently been acquired by the Priory Church and the teaching of the true Catholic Faith to children is taking place there again. Indeed, the work of the Order, this wonderful nun’s legacy, goes on today across the world.

Her life is told in the book With Christ in His Passion (Gracewing) by the Chief Promoter of her cause for some thirty years, Sr Dominic Savio Hamer CP.

With Christ in His Passion is available from the LMS online shop £7.05 (incl. p&p). For further reading: Elizabeth Prout 1820 - 1864: A Religious Life for Industrial England by Edna Hamer, £17.85 (incl. p&p).

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ROMAN REPORT

The Old Rite at St Peter’s Alberto Carosa looks at the life of Mgr Richard Soseman

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f the Catholic clergy and the faithful worldwide have reacted with consternation and dismay at the ban on the celebration of private individual Masses in St Peter’s basilica, all the more so for those who used to celebrate and attend those Masses. Mgr Richard Soseman (1963-2020), a native of the diocese of Peoria, Illinois, was one of those celebrants throughout his stint in Rome, but Providence spared him the pain of the ban, since he died of covid on 9 December 2020.

In the spring issue of Mass of Ages I paid tribute to Fr Giuseppe Vallauri, noting that “sometimes it happens that in the times and circumstances in which the death of a person occurs, it is possible to see indications of the extent to which he or she was appreciated by the Lord.”

If this applies to Father Vallauri, all the more so to Mgr Soseman, who as a close friend and collaborator of Father Valluari embodied another bastion of traditional liturgy.

In fact, Mgr Richard R. Soseman passed away on the anniversary of the death of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, for whose cause of beatification he was vice-postulator. So the early morning Mass celebrated in the Cathedral of Santa Maria in Peoria on the 41st anniversary of Archbishop Sheen’s death, was also a first opportunity for the Diocese of Peoria to mourn the death of Mgr Soseman, which took place a few hours earlier. “In some ways it is providential and fitting that on the same day that Sheen went home to God, so does Mgr Soseman”, declared the celebrant, the coadjutor bishop, Louis Tylka.

Mississipi River In an interview in the traditionalist blog Messa in Latino on 14 November, 2019, Mgr Soseman provides us with some biographical data. Born and raised on an island in the Mississippi River on the border with Iowa, he

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received a good formation in the faith from his parents, then in the parish school of St Anne, then in the P. Alleman High School and finally at Marquette Jesuit University in the state of Wisconsin.

Trained at Mount St Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, the oldest in the United States, he was ordained priest in 1992.

After further studies at the Pontifical Lateran University, he served as Judicial Vicar in Peoria for 14 years and then as an official for almost 10 years in Rome at the Congregation for the Clergy, and for 14 years as parish priest (also simultaneously with the other posts). Latterly, in fact, he was in charge of three parishes in the diocese of Peoria.

Many years have passed, but as far as I can remember, we met in Rome in the church of Gesù e Maria al Corso, one of the very few churches where in those days the Vetus Ordo was regularly celebrated on Sundays, and which the then young Father Soseman had begun to attend since 1993. He immediately distinguished himself for his great zeal in promoting the ancient rite, often celebrating in the above church and always open to maximum cooperation with his confreres for the Mass to be always made available to the Traditionalist faithful. A great friend of Una Voce Italia, he used to celebrate Mass every morning in the Extraordinary Form, even in St Peter's Basilica.

Three parishes This zeal continued after his return to Peoria where he often celebrated Solemn Masses in the Traditional Rite.

Every week his three parishes served between 2000 and 3000 faithful, who attended not only the Novus Ordo, but also the ancient rite Masses every Sunday and every Tuesday.

“We Americans are much more open to liturgical variety”, the

Monsignor stressed. "For this reason now in most of our dioceses there are at least four or five churches in which the ancient Mass is celebrated."

He was enthusiastic as vicepostulator of the beatification cause of Archbishop Sheen. “His contribution in our work concerning the cause of the Servant of God Archbishop Fulton Sheen was of inestimable value”, read an obituary in the National Catholic Register. “Monsignor Soseman was a great man and he will be deeply missed.”

One of the most significant events that characterised this work, as Mgr Soseman himself revealed in the above interview, was the translation of the Venerable's mortal remains from St Patrick's Cathedral in New York, where he was buried as auxiliary bishop of that diocese, to St Mary's Cathedral in Peoria on 27 June, 2019. But why this transfer? As the Monsignor explained, despite being very beautiful, St Patrick's Cathedral was not suitable for housing the tomb of a saint. In New York it was normally impossible for the faithful to visit the tomb, because it had been placed under the main altar, and even family members had not been able to visit it. Therefore they asked for canonical and civil permission to move the body to the cathedral of Peoria.

After a long judicial process, the permission was finally granted in June 2019 and now the Archbishop's tomb is the destination of an uninterrupted pilgrimage: during the week it is visited daily by more than 200 faithful, who number about a thousand during weekends.

Popular devotion This popular devotion may indicate that Archbishop Sheen is destined to play a major role in the future of America. This is exactly the conviction of Dr Peter Howard, (Doctorate in Sacred Theology STD), President of the Fulton Sheen Institute, as quoted in

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ROMAN REPORT

Mgr Richard Soseman with Pope Benedict: great zeal in promoting the ancient rite

the above obituary. He never met Mgr Soseman, but closely followed his work for the cause of Archbishop Sheen and noted the significance of 9 December on the Catholic calendar.

The institute’s webinar, The Final Hour: Fulton Sheen's Plan to Save America and the World, Dr Howard pointed out, ‘was based on Sheen’s statement that ‘nothing happens out of heaven without the greatest finesses of detail.

‘So why would God choose to bring Venerable Fulton Sheen to his heavenly reward on the anniversary of the same day that He would send His Immaculate

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Mother to begin the evangelization of the Americas and the New World at Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City in 1531?

What connection is heaven wanting us to make? It’s clear to me that God chose Fulton Sheen to be the most important prophet and general for bringing America back to God in its final hour of the great confrontation for its very soul. I believe Monsignor Soseman understood this; and all the work he did to bring Sheen and his teaching back to the forefront of the Church’s reflection is something we Catholics in America need to be thankful for and pray and spiritually fight for in order

to remove the devil’s attempt to keep Sheen from being beatified. We hope to see finished what Monsignor helped us start, because America needs Sheen now more than ever!’

What a gift to Mgr Soseman, Dr Howard went on, ‘that he died on the same day Sheen did. That day will eventually be Sheen’s feast day... a day that Mgr Soseman's tireless work for his cause brought about for the Church, especially in the United States.

What a gift, and what a divine stamp of approval on the life of Our Lord’s faithful priest-victim who lived a life in the footsteps of Venerable Sheen.’

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

DIOCESAN DIGEST Mass of Ages quarterly round-up Arundel and Brighton Huw Davies aandb@lms.org.uk This is my first report as the new Rep for Arundel and Brighton after Anne-Marie Mackie-Savage stepped down from the role at the start of 2021 following many years of loyal service. I would like to thank her for her work and wish her the very best.

There remain a good number of public Masses in the Extraordinary Form across our diocese despite the most recent national lockdown. At St Pancras in Lewes, Canon Jonathan Martin now celebrates an EF Mass every Sunday at 12.30pm, in addition to the longer-standing Saturday morning Mass, with this provision appreciated by regular parishioners as well as more established devotees of the Traditional Mass.

There is a hope to train up more servers soon to fill the shoes of regular server Mr Ben Williams, whom we congratulate on his acceptance for formation for the Permanent Diaconate.

At St Barnabas in East Molesey, Fr Richard Biggerstaff has also supplemented his usual Saturday morning EF Mass with a 12.15pm Mass on the first Sunday of the month, meaning an extra Mass in the top corner of the diocese. Here as well as at Lewes, visitors are encouraged to have a look at the stunning Paschal candles, both of which were designed and painted

by Molesey parishioner Mrs Kerryn Penson and inspired by the famous mosaics in the basilica of San Clemente in Rome.

In the far west of the diocese, at my parish of St Hugh of Lincoln in Knaphill, Fr Gerard Hatton continues to celebrate a Thursday evening Mass in addition to the 8am Sunday Mass, which has become a fixture of the parish schedule since the summer of last year. This Mass has seen great growth since its introduction and now attracts a number of young families and couples. We were blessed to witness the beautiful service of “Churching” of a new mother in January, and there is hope that a number of the children attending this Mass will be able to start catechesis for first Communion and Confirmation together. There will also be an initiative to train some younger servers to add to the small but committed group of men who currently serve at the altar here.

At Sacred Heart, Caterham, Fr Sean Finnegan continues to celebrate a Wednesday morning Mass, albeit currently only on the live-stream due to the impact of Covid health and safety regulations on Mass attendance. We pray that we will soon be rid of the restrictions on our worship to allow this Mass to become public once again.

Finally, members will be glad to hear that the diocese’s newest priest, Fr Thomas Kent, who was ordained at Arundel last summer, has begun learning the Traditional Mass and has celebrated a small number on the live-stream of St Joseph’s Guildford, where he is serving as curate.

Birmingham and Black Country Louis Maciel 07392 232225 birmingham@lms.org.uk birmingham-lms-rep.blogspot.co.uk/ The popularity of the 10.30am Sunday High Mass at the Oratory, which regularly required an overflow Mass in the Upper Cloister Hall to accommodate numbers as a result of the reduced capacity due to Covid guidelines, has meant

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that an additional 7.30am Low Mass has been introduced on Sundays. There are now three Masses in the region on a Sunday, with the two at the Oratory complemented by the 11.30am Mass at St Mary-on-the-Hill in Wednesbury.

The Oratory celebrated a full programme in the Extraordinary Form for Holy Week, starting with a slightly earlier 10am High Mass on Palm Sunday to accommodate the longer liturgy. Tenebrae for Good Friday and Holy Saturday took place at 8pm the night before, having been celebrated in the morning on the day itself in previous years, which meant that the Maundy Thursday High Mass had to be moved to the slightly earlier time of 6.30pm.

Earlier in Lent, Ash Wednesday and the Annunciation saw a Low Mass at St Mary-on-the-Hill at 5pm followed by a High Mass at the Oratory at 7.30pm, replacing the usual 5.45pm Low Mass.

The Feast of St Joseph in the Year of St Joseph fell on a third Friday, which meant there were three Masses in the Extraordinary Form in the region: the regular Friday Low Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in Wolverhampton, the usual High Mass at the Oratory and the monthly third Friday Low Mass at St Dunstan’s, which it was hoped would be sung but unfortunately the cantor was unable to make it.

Due to Good Friday falling on the first Friday, the monthly Mass at Acocks Green had to be delayed by a week in April, but there was a very good attendance at Mass during Lent, where it followed the parish Stations of the Cross.

Birmingham, (Oxford) Joseph Shaw oxford@lms.org.uk As we cautiously move towards normal, I am glad to say that sung Masses are back on the menu, and we have been having these on Sundays in Holy Rood (Oxford, Abingdon Road) and on feast days in SS Gregory & Augustine’s (Oxford, Woodstock Road). This pattern will continue: please see the Mass listings for details.

The one-off events I organised in the past in the Oxford area are still difficult with the remaining restrictions we will have to wait a bit longer for them.

Nevertheless, I am planning a server-training day in Oxford, for Saturday 17th July (tbc): please email me if you are interested in taking part.

Birmingham (North Staffs) Alan Frost Fr Paul Chavasse, Cong. Orat., has continued to offer the Traditional Rite at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Swynnerton every Sunday, throughout the Covid restrictions, though latterly with only spiritual Communion due his own health issues. Obviously, Fr Paul is hoping to be able to give the Blessed Sacrament to worshippers (whose numbers have stayed good) as soon as possible. As a prison chaplain he also hopes to be able to offer Mass for inmates (though in the OF) who have been deprived of his visits through this grim time.

At St Augustine’s, Stoke-on-Trent (Meir), Fr Kasimierz Stefak, OSPPE, continues to celebrate the Old Rite Mass weekly on Wednesday evenings (7 pm) and is working towards offering his first Missa Cantata.

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY East Anglia (West) Gregor and Alisia Dick Sunday Masses continue at Blackfriars in Cambridge, where for the time being an altar has been erected in the cloister in order to overcome the limited capacity of the chapel. For details of Masses on holy days of obligation, please consult the Mass listings on the LMS website close to the time, or contact us.

East Anglia (Withermarsh Green) Sarah Ward 07522 289449 withermarshgreen@lms.org.uk It has been a delight to watch winter thaw and spring arrive at Withermarsh Green, heralded by snowdrops and followed by daffodils. The surrounding hedgerows have thickened with fresh greenery and blossom, pheasants and baby rabbits darting in and out, baby lambs and calves in the fields. What a glorious setting to celebrate Easter!

The highlight of the season has undoubtedly been the Sacred Triduum, following the pre-1955 liturgy. Special thanks to David Pearce for his expertise in training the Altar Servers and acting as MC throughout the Triduum. Thanks also to Thomas O’Sullivan for his invaluable help on the Altar and in the Choir – we were all particularly impressed by his stamina singing the 12 Prophecies at the Easter Vigil! Thank you to Dan Wright, Cantor throughout the Triduum; to all the Altar Servers who gave up their time to practice and to serve; to all the ladies who helped to clean and decorate the church for Easter; and finally, a huge thank you to Father Henry, who always makes it look effortless but we appreciate the hard work and prayerful preparation has been put in behind the scenes. Happy Easter!

Hexham and Newcastle Keith McAllister 01325 308968 07966 235329 k_mcallister@ymail.com Following a full year’s hiatus, we recommenced Sunday TLMs at Sacred Heart Thornley on 28 Feb (Lent 2) celebrated

by Fr Paul Tully.

The Lenten weeks have been very busy for the Dewhurst Singers, mainly at St Joseph’s Gateshead, commencing with the Patronal Feast on 19 March, a sung Mass in F by Joseph Gruber with Pitoni’s Cantate Domino. On Palm Sunday the choir included music by Casali; for Maundy Thursday pieces by Anerio and Byrd; then on Easter Day items from Christopher Tye and Caspar Ett. We learned of the death of Father Wilfrid Elkin on 13 March at the age of 85 after over 61 years of ordained dedicated ministry. He served this diocese in 5 parishes of Tyne & Wear and latterly Teesdale, while robustly promoting Traditional Rites, training priests and servers from UK regions and leading pilgrimages to Rome, Fatima and UK sites. Father Wilfrid will be greatly missed and fondly remembered; Requiescant in Pace! A rare Sung Requiem was celebrated by our Bishop Robert Byrne OP at St Mary’s Barnard Castle, assisted by Fr Shaun Swales as M.C. and a full sanctuary team directed by Leo Darroch. 11 diocesan priests, including our retired Bishop were in choir. The Dewhurst choir sang the Missa da requiem by Anerio plus a Vittoria motet.

There is a lovely private chapel at Cheeseburn Grange, Northumberland and we are delighted to be offered use of this for Ancient Rite liturgies by the owner. We have Priests who are willing and able to facilitate this and we hope to report a start date in May.

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Lancaster Bob & Jane Latin NB new phone number: 01772 962387 lancaster@lms.org.uk latinmasslancaster.blogspot.com John Rogan 01524 858832 lancasterassistant@lms.org.uk Our Spring report was submitted in time but due to a gremlin in the system it didn't get printed! You will see from the details above that we have a new Assistant Representative.

Nicholas is resident in the Presbytery at Warwick Bridge, Carlisle, and now has responsibility for the northern part of the Diocese. John Rogan will continue to assist with the liturgical arrangements and will cover the middle section of the diocese, which embraces Lancaster and the surrounding areas. We will cover the southern section, taking in Preston and Blackpool. This arrangement should work well as by the time you read this (Deo volente) we should have moved to our new home in Preston. We will update our members with our new details.

On the Feast of St Joseph, by kind invitation of the parish priest, Fr John Millar, a Solemn High Mass was celebrated at St Joseph's Church, Preston.

The Masses at St Walburge's and English Martyrs in Preston continue to be well supported, even within the constraints of social distancing, and it is a joy to be able to forget the troubles in the outside world for a couple of hours.

After the deprivations of last year, it was wonderful to be able to celebrate Holy Week and Easter in a fitting manner, especially the three-hour Palm Sunday Mass. On Easter Sunday the traditional blessing of the lamb took place, much to the delight of the young (and not so young!). Next year we hope that we will be able to join in with more of the services.

We also hope that as restrictions ease we may be able to have processions again, such as for Corpus Christi; please check our website for up-to-date details.

Fr Etienne continues to offer an EF Mass on Monday mornings at St John Vianney in Blackpool. Canon Watson has scheduled a monthly Mass on second Fridays at Our Lady & St Michael at Workington, but please do check before travelling as sometimes this has to be cancelled. For all Mass times please see the Mass Listings.

Lancaster (North) Nicholas Steven 07715 539395 warwickbridge@lms.org.uk When I was a boy, we would regularly have over 100 souls in the pews for Sunday Mass at Our Lady and St Wilfrid's, Warwick Bridge - being sprinkled at the Asperges and then participating in the glories of the Mass of Ages.

Then the withering away began and now, due to Covid doom, we are allowed no more than 20 souls at a time in the building. But our new Saturday Traditional Mass has quickly outstripped the 20 limit and we have had to move temporarily to a much larger church in Carlisle. The new venue is St Margaret Mary, 75 Scalegate Rd, Carlisle CA2 4JX. The Mass is still at 10 am every Saturday morning. All are welcome.

Our congregation of regulars continues to grow and now includes fugitives from Scotland, where Masses had been banned altogether. It feels like penal times all over again. Maybe it's time to reread John Gerard's Hunted Priest or to write the modern-day sequel, Hunted Parishioner.

Our Schola is rehearsing hard for our next Missa Cantata ( Salve Sancta Parens) and Masters William Whalen

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY and Lenny Pattinson are preparing hard for their debuts as altar boys. It was noticeable that Canon Luiz Ruscillo, who beautifully celebrates the TLM for us, having lost a fair bit of weight over Lent, now looks vibrantly youthful in his cassock with red piping. He claims to have a matching biretta, though we have not seen it yet!

Two FSSP priests and a seminarian chose The Presbytery at Warwick Bridge for the pre-Easter retreat this year, offering their daily private Masses in the church. One of them will be returning shortly with two more EF-enabled priests for their post-Easter break. There are other irons in the fire which I hope to report on in the next edition. Of course, our big hope remains that the Traditional Mass will be made available on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation in the near future.

Please pray for that intention.

Liverpool (Warrington) Alan Frost It was revealed in last issue’s Report that Sunday attendance had increased considerably (from 150 to 250), and such is the continuing increase that an additional Sunday Mass (low) has been introduced, at 9 a.m. with Confession available before the Mass. On average one hundred confessions are heard every week. There is also considerable increase in the attendance at ‘ordinary’ weekday Masses as well as on the notable Feast Days. The large size of the church allows this while abiding by Covid regulations. Monitors are required to organise the numbers receiving Holy Communion at all Masses in conformity to the Covid restrictions. Masses, Sunday and weekdays, also continue to be presented live online at LiveMass.net The great news is the expected beginning of a Regina Caeli Hybrid Academy in Warrington in September.

Following the Saturday Masses there are Catechism classes for children with their parents in the education unit of the Priory buildings. These buildings formerly served as a school and Convent, whose nuns taught the children from 1899-1967 and belonged to the Order founded by the now Venerable Elizabeth Prout, or Mother Mary Joseph CP as she became. This is a wonderful revival of a great mission, and it is hoped that come September a full Catholic curriculum can be offered. Interest is welcomed: www.rcahybrid.org.uk/ application-form.

Children also make their first Holy Communions at certain Sunday Masses, five boys and girls receiving the Sacrament for the first time in mid-Lent. Older children and adults will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation from Archbishop Malcolm McMahon OP of Liverpool, who again has kindly agreed to confer the Sacrament of Confirmation at St Mary’s on Saturday 10 July, 2021, at 3:00pm. Candidates are not restricted as to their parish locations. Archbishop McMahon of Liverpool entrusted the FSSP with the canonical mission of making the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite available to all in the Liverpool Archdiocese, but, of course, the priests welcome anyone from other dioceses. The Confirmation of nineteen candidates from several dioceses by the Archbishop last July illustrated this point. Those interested should contact Fr Stewart FSSP at astewart@olgseminary.org. And further on the theme of young people, on St Joseph’s Day, Rector Fr de Malleray offered Mass and gave a talk on ‘God’s foster-father’ to a Juventutem gathering in London.

The Winter issue of the magazine Dowry is available on https://fssp.org.uk/category/dowry/. As many people have come to the Traditional Rite for the first time and come to appreciate its mystical nature and spiritual depth, the priests remind them of the importance to orthodoxy of the manner of receiving Holy Communion and dressing decently and with respect in the House of God.

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Menevia Elaine Sharpling meneviastabatmater.blogspot.com/ Thanks to the steadfast determination of Canon Jason Jones, Father Paul Brophy and Father Liam Bradley, Masses have continued in Menevia over the past few weeks albeit with limited capacity in the churches.

Father Liam offered his second EF Mass on Palm Sunday and we were pleased to receive blessed palms and participate in a small but determined procession accompanied by sung chant.

Another welcome development is that new cameras have been installed at Sacred Heart Morriston, which means that the sanctuary and the Divine Mercy Chapel can be viewed 24/7 and all Masses and devotions are now live-streamed. Please check the parish website for the livestream link.

Holy Mass at Sacred Heart, Morriston has been moved from 4pm to a new time of 1pm – typically Mass in Morriston is on the 1st, 3rd & 5th Sundays.

Travel restrictions have been lifted in Wales but it is essential to book a place at Mass before travelling. We continue to post information on our blogspot so please check here for the latest information: http://meneviastabatmater.blogspot.com/ Middlesbrough Paul Waddington The York Oratory continues to offer weekday Low Masses at 8.15am, and Sung Masses at noon on Sundays. There are also Sung Masses at 6pm on principal feast days. In Hull, Fr Massie continues to offer a Low Mass at the Church of Our Lady and St Peter Chanel on Thursday evenings at 7.30pm. Regrettably, the Saturday Latin Masses in Middlesbrough that were suspended due to the Covid epidemic have not yet been resumed.

Northampton North (Northamptonshire) Paul Beardsmore 01858 434037 northampton@lms.org.uk The new Sunday 8 am Mass at St Brendan, Corby, is attracting a good congregation, and I am optimistic that numbers will improve further as we exit the third lockdown. Prior to Christmas there were, in addition to the regular Saturday and Sunday Masses, Low Masses for All Saints and All Souls and the feasts of the Immaculate Conception. A private funeral Mass was also celebrated in the traditional rite for LMS member Mrs Kathleen Brodie, who died at the end of November.

At Christmas we were able to have both a Sung First Mass and a Low Dawn Mass, and during the festive season there were also Low Masses for New Year's Day, the Epiphany, the Baptism of Our Lord and the Purification.

Lent opened with a Mass for Ash Wednesday, and there were also Masses for the feasts of St Joseph and the Annunciation of the BVM. Thanks to Fr Byrne's enthusiasm and generosity we were able to celebrate the Sacred Triduum in Northamptonshire according to the 1955 rite for what I believe is only the second time in fifty years. Despite Covid restrictions the services were well attended.

Apart from thanking Fr Byrne for making possible such a full programme of Masses, I should like to thank the servers, and particularly Stephen Parker for guiding us through the Holy Week ceremonies.

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY Northampton (South) Barbara Kay 01234 340759 bedford@lms.org.uk mbky3@outlook.com

St Valentine’s Day fell on a Sunday this year and appropriately at Bedford after the 12.30 pm Mass, one of our regular servers, Francis Wanjiru, and his fiancée, Celia Budd, celebrated their betrothal, with their marriage planned for the day before the Feast of the Assumption in August of this year.

This happy event was quickly followed by the more solemn ceremonies of Ash Wednesday. There was an evening Mass at Bedford which was attended to capacity; as we have many large families among our faithful, we can fit in a good number of people while keeping within the social distancing regulations.

As Lent proceeded, thanks to our FSSP priests coming from Warrington and Reading each weekend, and assisted by priestin-residence Fr Nicholas Nwanzi, we were able to have two hours of Confessions each Saturday afternoon. Many people took the opportunity to avail themselves of these. Heartfelt thanks must go to our priests, and also to our faithful and hardworking stewards Rita Carroll and Katherine Smith for enabling these Confessions to take place safely.

Holy Week soon arrived and some of us ventured northwards to join the congregation at St Brendan’s, Corby, about an hour’s drive from Bedford, where for the first time since the 1960s Fr Gerard Byrne celebrated the Sacred Triduum in the Old Rite. I will leave my fellow Rep in the north of the Diocese to report on that! On Easter Sunday back in Bedford, Fr Matthew Goddard celebrated our usual two Masses in a beautifully decorated church. It is sad that neither of these Masses could be sung this year.

We are looking forward to three Holydays of Obligation over the next few months: Ascension Day, Corpus Christi and SS Peter and Paul, with a Low Mass at 7.30 pm on each of these. At the time of writing, we are planning to keep Sunday Masses at the current times of 8.30 am and 12.30 pm until the easing of the lockdown enables us to fit everyone in to one Mass. Confessions will usually be available on Saturday afternoons from 3 pm – 5 pm. As always, please see our Facebook page: https://www. facebook.com/bedfordlatinmass/ for updates.

Nottingham Jeremy Boot 07462 018386 The strict conditions for Covid still linger on which reduces out current Sunday Masses each month to the Good Shepherd, Thackeray’s Lane, Nottingham on 2nd Saturdays (Sunday Mass) at 4.30pm. Some Masses are now sung. In the week, most Wednesdays there is Low Mass at 6.30 at Our Lady of the Annunciation, Ashby Road Loughborough, where in the last months we have been able to celebrate Ash Wednesday, St Joseph and the Annunciation as Sung Masses. Further Masses may be possible for Ascension and Corpus Christi but have yet to be confirmed.

Derby has been a no-go area for years, but I am glad to report that there is now Low Mass at 8am each Sunday at St Joseph’s Burton Rd, Derby DE1 1TJ and we hope to have a sung Mass there also on or around Whit Sunday.More details will appear on the LMS website. I am also hopeful that before too long the Cathedral 6.15 (3rd Wed) Masses might resume. Definite dates for these Masses cannot yet be given however. The Masses at Our Lady and St Patrick’s, Nottingham on the 3rd and 4th Sundays are still not possible until the draconian regulations are lifted. I hope this may be in September, after the holidays, if not before.

Meanwhile, thanks to our priests and those who help in any way in these trying times. This includes those cheerful covid wardens / stewards in the churches who allow us to pursue the celebrations which would otherwise be logistical impossible.

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Plymouth (Cornwall) Stefano Mazzeo cornwall@lms.org.uk Masses at Lanherne continue at 10am on Sundays and 8am Mondays to Saturdays, and please note that two Masses have been added to the schedule at 8:30 on Sundays, and on Thursdays there will be another at 6:15 as well as the usual Mass at 8am. Confessions are on Saturdays at 3pm and from 9.15 to 9.45 on Sundays.

We are starting a new video magazine programme based at Lanherne, called Christendom Rising, which will be broadcast on YouTube. The programme will hopefully go out once every two or three months and will be about twenty to thirty minutes long. Each programme will contain features on Lanherne, the Latin Mass, Traditional Catholic living, and home schooling etc.

Although I have been considering doing something along these lines for some time it was Bishop Mark O'Toole of Plymouth who suggested it to me. The first programme features Bishop Mark talking about how important the prayers of sisters are to the diocese and how he hopes Lanherne will develop. Canon Scott Smith gives his impressions on coming to Cornwall as an American Priest, he also talks about the need to restore the chapel. We hope to have regular features such as bringing up a Traditional Catholic family in the modern world and home schooling with one of our parishioners Mrs Josephine Ford who is interviewed by our presenter Sophie Oliver. Many thanks to all who took part. So, tune in to view these items and much more.

Plymouth (Devon) Maurice Quinn 07555 536579 devon@lms.org.uk Although due to current virus restrictions we are not in a position to resume our Latin Masses at Blessed Sacrament, Exeter, and at St Cyprian’s, Ugbrooke House, the weekly Sunday afternoon usus antiquior Mass celebration at St Edward the Confessor in Plymouth has been continuing as usual. Canon Scott Smith, ICKSP celebrates the regular Sunday afternoon Mass at 3pm after travelling up from his base at Lanherne Convent in Cornwall. The regularity of this weekly Sunday Mass, along with Canon Scott’s pastoral care for those who attend, is a regular feature of Catholic life in Plymouth, attracting young people and families. Recently, Canon Scott had to be away for a number of weeks, but Fr Anselm Gribbin temporarily took over the Canon’s duties at St Edward’s and at Lanherne. Please note that if you would like to receive Canon Scott Smith’s weekly newsletter email – with full details of services - just send a request to canon.smith@institute-christking.org and he will put you on his emailing list A really cracking piece of good news was recently announced by Bishop Mark O’Toole – a piece of news that will perhaps have consequences far beyond the diocese. The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest has been invited to oversee the Torquay parish of Holy Angels, which is to be designated a Shrine Church, serving not only local people but those from a much wider area. At long last the Traditional Latin Mass will be celebrated daily in Torquay, and will give local traditional Catholics a much needed home parish with a resident Institute priest providing them with full pastoral care.

As always, do check the Mass Listings, and get in touch with me if you have any questions, and be assured that I will keep everyone informed regarding developments at Blessed Sacrament in Exeter, and at St Cyprian’s, Ugbrooke House.

If you wish to receive updates from me regarding any of the above, please give me your contact details and I will be happy to oblige.

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY Plymouth (Dorset) Maurice Quinn 07555 536579 devon@lms.org.uk It is pleasing to report that despite prevailing negative circumstances, there is much to celebrate in Dorset, where scheduled Latin Masses still took place during the last quarter despite the lockdown. Although I could not be present due to travel restrictions then in place, Mgr Francis Jamieson at Our Lady of Lourdes & St Cecilia at Blandford Forum, and Fr Martin Budge at Our Lady’s, Marnhull, both continued as usual with their usus antiquior Mass celebrations, both of which I look forward to attending over the coming months. The good news does not stop here, however, as the proposed Latin Mass pilgrimage in honour of the Chideock Martyrs has been re-scheduled to take place at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs & St Ignatius, Chideock, on Saturday 16 October. Bishop Mark O’Toole is to be celebrant, assisted by a priest of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest as MC. This occasion will be the first time that a Bishop of Plymouth has celebrated a Traditional Latin Mass in the diocese since the post Vatican II changes over 50 years ago.

The rescheduling of this much longed-for event was in order to reduce the possibility of cancellation, as happened in 2020 due to virus restrictions then in place, and has been agreed by all relevant parties. The previous Chideock Latin Mass event (2019) was a resounding success, so I urge you to make a note in your dairies and keep that day free, especially as it will prove to be a very special day for the Latin Mass Society, for parishioners, and for the diocese as a whole.

Do check the Mass Listings, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding any of the above.

Portsmouth (Isle of Wight) Peter Clarke EF Masses continue on the Isle of Wight, mainly at St Thomas’s, Cowes. These are offered on Thursdays at 12 noon

by Fr Jonathan Redvers Harris. This means that we will have an EF Mass on Ascension Day and the Feast of Corpus Christi. This year marks 33 years of EF Masses being offered on the Island.

We remember with gratitude all the visiting priests who came here in the past to keep the Old Mass alive. We would be pleased to hear from any priest who would like to spend a few days with us on our beautiful Island and to offer Mass for us.

Please ring for confirmation of these Masses if you are coming from the mainland: 01983 566740 or 07790 892592 June 25 marks the 10th anniversary of the Ordination of Fr Jonathan as a Catholic (Ordinariate) priest. We are grateful to him for his ministry and, in particular, for learning to offer the E.F. Mass, when Fr Glaysher left and went to Aldershot and there was no Island priest who would celebrate this Mass for us.

Portsmouth (Reading) Adrian Dulston 01491 682909 Once again appreciative of the splendid efforts of Fr Goddard and Fr Phipps valiantly holding the fort in several places and still giving us a Triduum at St John Fisher Parish (St William of York Church, Upper Redlands Road, Reading) albeit revised times for the Saturday Vigil being earlier in the evening.

Despite the restrictions Maundy Thursday Mass retained the dramatic elements, even if we were seated throughout with the invitation to stay for watching or perhaps return later to the Church due to spacing etc.

The Good Friday service felt a little strange with not having the kissing of the Crucifix but, then again, we had something to offer up after we recall the central liturgical theme that Christ had offered Himself for us especially on this day.

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The Lady’s group was to continue with Zoom meetings if there were numbers. Please get in touch with Fr Phipps if you are interested in future meetings, which I believe are about the Gifts of the Holy Ghost in anticipation of Pentecost For those interested in the Confraternity of the FSSP, Fr Phipps has taken over from Fr de Malleray as the administrator so please contact Fr Phipps at sphipps@fssp.org I myself have joined after hearing an inspiring sermon by Fr de Malleray on the need to pray for vocations to the priesthood – it involves: Pray one decade of the Holy Rosary for the sanctification of our priests and for our priestly vocations, adding the Prayer of the Confraternity; Every year: have the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered once for these intentions.

The members commitments place them among most faithful benefactors, and as such, among the particular recipients of priests’ and seminarians’ daily prayers.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered each month for the members of the Confraternity in each area. Plenary indulgences can be gained.

NOTE: Parking at St William of York Church: If you find that the church car park is full on Sundays, St Joseph's College, next door to St William's, have kindly agreed to our parishioners using their car park. Please do not use the church car park's disabled parking spaces unless you are a disabled badge holder.

Portsmouth Peter Cullinane pmcullinane@hotmail.com I am concentrating in this issue on the parish of the Marian Franciscans in St Joseph’s, Copnor, on Portsea Island as considerable developments have occurred this year so far.

In January the Friends of the Marian Franciscans was recognised by the Charity Commission under reference No. 1193158 which means that it potentially qualifies for both Gift Aid on income donations and Inheritance Tax relief for donors at the respective rates of 25% and 40%, generous rates far in excess of most European countries.

The presbytery of St Joseph’s, Copnor is effectively the house of formation for the Friars, having been allocated by Bishop Philip Egan to supplement the house in Gosport which continues as a separate parish.

Currently there are 2 priests, 5 Friars and one novice in residence at St Joseph’s, whilst in Gosport there are currently 4 priests and 3 Friars. This rapidly growing Marian Franciscan family is very international, with English, Italian, German, American, and African representation.

A welcome piece of publicity in January was a photo in two national newspapers of two younger Friars, still dressed in their robes, playing football in a local park. It is hoped that this will raise the public awareness of the house and attract the financial support which is badly needed. As can be imagined, given the size and sudden increase in the community, there is an urgent need for financing basic household and living expenses.

The Friends have set up the Charity to help remedy this. More information on the activities of the Marian Franciscans which the Charity is supporting, including their extensive schedule of old rite Mass services across the two sites and their vibrant digital media apostolate, can be found at www.themarianfranciscans.org: – If you need guidance about substantial donations, do not hesitate to contact me or email info@friendsofthemarianfranciscans.org.

Thanks to the support of the LMS, magnificent old rite Holy Week services took place on all four days at St Joseph’s, thanks to Matthew Schellhorn and his two colleagues in the Cantus Magnus Choir. Despite the length of the services, there were quite a few families with young children whose conduct was exemplary and most reverent and the impression struck me that even the youngest of them was perfectly at home in a church, which of course, is as it should be!

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY A recent development has been the institution of a children’s choir and I was most impressed recently by the word-perfect singing (in Latin) of the Adore Te Devote by children who cannot have been older than 10.

In conclusion, it would be wonderful if the funding could match the need and activity of this rapidly growing community.

Shrewsbury (Chester) Andrew Neilsen Sadly, this will be my last report for the Chester Mass.

Towards the end of last year, because of declining numbers in the congregation, it was decided to discontinue the Latin Mass at Chester. It only remains to thank the various people who were involved: Canons Montjean and Poucin of the Institute of Christ the King for taking time out of a demanding schedule to celebrate the Masses, as well as on occasion Canon Francis Doyle of Wrexham Diocese. Thanks also to Parish Priest Fr Emeka for allowing the use of St Clare’s, LMS Secretary Kevin Jones for invaluable support throughout the period of the Masses and also former Shrewsbury LMS Rep Anthony Sibert who helped initiate the Chester Mass. We were lucky to have an organist, Peter Cooke, and choir which meant we could have sung Masses until the first lockdown.

Becky Irvine and Heather Hesketh kindly agreed to be stewards for Masses under Covid restrictions. Esme McCarthy gave much useful help in the use of the sacristy and church. A final mention must be given to the loyal and regular members of the congregation who attended over several years.

Southwark (St Bede’s, Clapham Park) Thomas Windsor I am pleased to report we have had record numbers to our Liturgies over Holy Week and Easter Sunday. Our church being at our Covid capacity for all the major services. I would like to thank Fr Patrick Pullicino who has recently been assigned to St Bede’s, for celebrating the major services of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday for us, and spending so much time preparing, attending servers practices and learning all the music. Our serving team has worked especially hard to cope with the minor modifications needed to follow the arbitrary Covid guidelines. Our choir has also been able to meet and sing, their contribution has been to sing many more polyphonic Masses (including the Credo), so avoiding opportunities for the unjustly banned Congregational singing.

We had a Solemn Sung High Mass for the Annunciation, with all diocesan clergy. My eldest son was M.C. (Aged 14) assisted by his brothers and cousins aged 13, 12, 12, 10, 10, 10! All of course socially distanced! The choir meanwhile sang the Missa super Dixit Maria, Hassler including the Credo and motet, and his setting of the Ave Maris Stella.

On the Feast of St Joseph and Ash Wednesday the choir sang the Byrd 3 Part Mass, with his settings of the Emmendemus and Ave Verum to complete a feast of Byrd on Ash Wednesday.

We had our usual blessing of candles on Candlemas, and blessing of water, chalk and salt on the Feast of Epiphany. We also had polyphonic Mass settings for the Feast of the Holy Name, St Thomas of Canterbury, Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, 3rd Sunday of Advent and All Saints. To celebrate the 850th Anniversary of the Martyrdom St Thomas of Canterbury, we had a Solemn Sung High Mass with an excellent sermon from Fr Finigan that can be found on his blog.

Our choir has continued singing Polyphonic Propers on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, 3rd Sunday after Epiphany,

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Quinquagesima (including the Tract), and the 3rd Sunday of Lent, we are one of the few places in the world where these treasures of Catholic music can be heard as part of the Mass for which they were written.

While we did not have our usual All Saints party the children still dressed up as Saints, and were given prizes after Mass. Our Masses continue as normal, but if you are thinking of visiting us on Sunday, please come to the 12.15pm Mass as our 11am is usually full.

Southwark (Thanet) Antonia Robinson 01843 845880 07961 153963 RobinsonAntonia@icloud.com At time of writing (Low Sunday) the Shrine of St Augustine has just finished a glorious marathon of wellattended Lenten and Easter Liturgies in the Traditional Form every day of Holy Week and Easter Week. Despite the trials imposed by current restrictions, the ingenuity and industry of our priests, MC, servers and musicians meant that the Latin Mass community was able to worship fully and meaningfully whilst still adhering to the rules applied to church services. Fr Basden was delighted to welcome back Fr Gabriel Diaz Patri to celebrate the liturgies from Palm Sunday through to Friday of Easter Week inclusive.

Ben Scott, Director of Music at the Shrine worked tirelessly with Fr Patri and both remained in fine voice for the total of 13 days straight of sung ceremonies. Deacon David Hunter preached the homily for the two Solemn High Masses on Easter Thursday & Friday that wound up this wonderful fortnight: we look forward to his ordination this summer.

Access to the Sacrament of Confession is central to Holy Week devotions and we were delighted to have Fr Bernard McNally hearing confessions throughout the Triduum, as he does during Sunday Masses throughout the year. Our congregation expanded world-wide as everything was livestreamed and available to view by the over 1000 subscribers to the Shrine’s YouTube channel.

What a contrast with the situation last year! Here, in East Kent, we are profoundly grateful to our Parish Priest, Fr Basden, for his unfaltering support of tradition, families and the Faith, as well as to the other priests, MCs, servers and musicians who keep the heart in this ever-growing traditional community. Deo gratias.

Southwark (Kent) Marygold Turner 01580 291372 We have been much as before with our Masses in St Andrew’s, Tenterden at 12noon. Fr Behruz has welcomed us so warmly, it is a joy to be there. On Easter Sunday Fr Michael Cullinan came from London to celebrate Mass for us, and both on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday Ben Bevan provided a marvellous small choir that gave us the most exquisite music.

We are immensely lucky to have the privilege of his beautiful, professional music – both plainchant and polyphony.

The congregations are small and when I think of my garden Masses last year when 20+ people always came, I should remind everyone who came so loyally that Tenterden is only a few miles away from my home!

The next Sung Masses are 25 April; 9, 13 & 30 May; 3, 13, & 27 June; 11 & 25 July. Nine Sung Masses to come before August, when there will be none owing to holidays.

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REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY Please say a prayer for Fr Michael Woodgate who has been a very stalwart friend and is unwell. Lastly, Cecil Roberts, another great friend, who died aged 101 had a Requiem Mass on 28th April. R.I.P.

Perhaps rosaries of thanksgiving can be offered for this intention and for our priests. Also, the Prayer to St Michael, familiar from the end of Mass, whose protection we need against satanic attacks.

Southwark (Wandsworth) Julia Ashenden From Christmas to Easter the Oratory of St Mary Magdalen has continued to thrive under the dedicated and energetic leadership of Canon Martin Edwards. There are a sizeable number of new parishioners, drawn here by the timeless liturgy of the Mass of Ages.

During Lent there were some memorable feast days with Masses sung beautifully by David Guest’s Choir (Covidly reduced to three singers) on Laetare Sunday and Palm Sunday while on other feast days, such as Our Lady of Lourdes and The Annunciation, a group of three parishioners provided joyful Missa Cantatas.

During Lent there was also an extra Mass on Friday evenings at 7.30 which proved very popular, especially with the young of the parish and may therefore continue, but perhaps at a slightly earlier time which is in the process of being arranged.

Over Easter, Canon Edwards celebrated the traditional Triduum, expertly served by two French families and the church was as full as the Covid rules would allow. The Easter Day Mass was celebrated with great joy, accompanied by Mozart’s Coronation Mass and motets by Elgar and Handel, sung by David Guest’s trio.

There is now a Juventutem group which meets once a month in the evening for Mass said by Fr de Malleray, followed by a Conference. One such Mass was celebrated on the feast of St Joseph. Added to these fixtures, there is now a Men’s Association which meets on Thursday evenings for Compline at 10pm. A Women’s Association is shortly to be formed. This is indeed a flourishing parish.

Westminster (Willesden) Anna Grayson-Morley willesden@lms.org.uk 07710 472295 At last work has recommenced on replacing The Shrine organ. The present Shrine opened in 1930 relying on a less than ideal 2 manual instrument from the previous church. Not being able to afford the organ designed for the Shrine in the Depression years, it wasn’t until 1958 that an organ designed for a smaller church was obtained at a reasonable cost. Over the years extensions and adjustments were made, but never really spoke to the size of the building. When it was taken apart for removal before lockdown, it was discovered it was a mongrel of no less that parts from 6 previous instruments.

The replacement William Hill organ comes from a church in Wales that had laid idle for a couple of decades and needed restoration. After much consideration of other instruments, it was decided to go ahead and restore and install this mighty beast. It took a Spider Crane to lift the basic structure into place and in the coming months there is much to do – pipe repairs, new blower, the console which houses the keyboards and pedals and the magnets for the action which sends wind to play the pipes. So, after much anticipation, toil and treasure, we hope this will enable the Missa Cantata to be celebrated in the not-too-distant future.

Not surprisingly, fund raising for this project has been slow due to Covid and we only reached £7800 of the £75000 we need to match the money from the Parish reserves. Any donations would be most welcome. Please contact Father Stephen at the Parish for information as to how to donate.

I am also happy to report that Mass attendance has been rising during Lent from single digits to about 20, reaching 27 on Palm Sunday and 25 on Easter. These are the kind of numbers we need as well as the contributions that aid in the practicalities of keeping the EF Mass going.

Westminster (Spanish Place) Roger Wemyss Brooks wemyssbrooks@gmail.com The past year has been distressing for all of us, especially for those who depend on access to the sacraments. The long time at St James's without the EF Mass has been particularly painful. However, we are blessed in the metropolis to have other churches nearby with regular Masses. It may have been easy in the past to take such things as Confession and frequent Holy Communion for granted. The sinister pandemic has shaken us, depriving us of these gifts along with familiar handshakes and holy water.

A great blessing recently has been the streaming of Masses from all over the country, indeed worldwide. Of course, this is only available to those with computer access. I appreciate having a smart phone which enabled me to follow Holy Week ceremonies for Thursday and Friday from the FSSP in Warrington and also the Vigil, much restricted elsewhere but broadcast in full from FSSP in Fribourg. Our precious Liturgy is the same throughout the world and modern technology makes it instantly available.

As well as streaming we also need physical access to Our Lord. Our incarnational faith demands this. It is therefore another great blessing that EF Masses resume at St James's in May. I hope we may all express our gratitude by attending these Masses regularly and observing the necessary restrictions.

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Society of St Tarcisius Joseph Shaw, National Co-Ordinator Blog: www.tarcisius.org tarcisius@lms.org.uk After twelve months of inactivity, I am pleased to report that we have once again got training days planned. Namely, on Saturday 24th July at St Mary Moorfields, London; on Saturday 25th September at St James' Spanish Place, London; and on Saturday 20th November at St James' Spanish Place, London.

I am also hoping to have a training day in Oxford on 17th July.

These need to be booked: see the LMS website or the Society of St Tarcisius blog.

As in the past, these days start at 10:30 am and finish at about 3:30pm. We aim to cover the areas requested by participants, and beginners are always very welcome. The days generally conclude with enrolments into and promotions within the Society, which entitles members to wear our splendid enamelled medal when serving. There is no fee, but we do accept donations! Please see the blog for more on the Society, which is affiliated to the LMS. The LMS’s affiliated group of needleworkers, the Guild of St Clare, will as usual be running Vestment Mending Days alongside the server training: see their blog, www.guildofstclare.org

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FAMILY MATTERS

Ends and means James Preece on the vaccine dilemma facing Catholics

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here's a big decision coming, some of you may have made it already.

Whether to have the Covid vaccine?

Does it work? Is it safe? I'm not qualified to tell you. There, that was a short column.

Something else I'm not qualified to tell you is whether the vaccine is morally okay. You may have read online that the vaccines available in the UK have been tested using the HEK 293 fetal cell line.

What this means in practice is that parts of an aborted baby girl have been kept and grown in a lab in order to conduct experiments. In some vaccines these cells are also used in the manufacture of the vaccine but we are assured that they are ‘filtered out’ before you get your jab.

That's not a mad conspiracy theory, it is absolutely true.

The teaching of the Catholic Church on this matter is clear. Abortion is a grave evil. It's absolutely not okay. Any vaccine which makes use of aborted cells is clearly off limits, case closed. So why do I read that, not only has the Pope said it’s okay, he's said that ethically we should take the vaccine. What's that all about?

Well, it turns out the Catholic Church wasn't born yesterday and theologians through the centuries have thought about this stuff in rather a bit more detail than I ever have. St Thomas Aquinas in the 13th Century didn't have to think about vaccines but in his Summa Theologiae he did consider whether it is lawful to kill a man in self-defence (Q64) and, in the process, introduced the principle of double effect. I know what you are thinking: self-defence?

That's different – aborted babies are not synonymous with armed assailants! That's not the point here. The point is we can apply the principle of double effect to different problems. Bear with me...

Aquinas writes: ‘Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental.’ In other words, your action can have two outcomes – one you intended and another you did not intend. The morality of the action depends on the intended outcome, not the unintended one. In the case of the Covid vaccine, the intention is to avoid people dying from a virus. That's clearly a good

SUMMER 2021

The jab: is it morally okay?

intention and the act would therefore be good. The secondary effect of using of fetal cell lines would be bad, but not intended.

Does that mean we can do evil in order that good may come of it? Clearly not. Aquinas continues: “Though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end.’ In other words, we have to balance the evil effects of our actions against the good ones. If the bad outweighs the good, then it ceases to be a good act. In the case of the Covid vaccine, it could be argued that using material from an aborted baby to test the vaccine is out of proportion to the end of saving lives from the virus, especially if one doubts the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. In that case one would have to say, as Bishop Athanasius Schneider does, that the ends do not justify the means. On the other hand, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has received the vaccine. There are good people on both sides and both views are reasonable.

Let's say the ends are proportional and we can receive the vaccine – are we off the hook? Aquinas is clear that the unintended outcomes must be limited to that which is necessary, ‘if a man, in self-defence, uses

more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful’. It seems to me that the vaccines which are manufactured using fetal cells must be rejected in favour of the ones which are only tested. If a vaccine existed that had not even been tested using fetal cells, clearly the problematic ones would no longer be necessary and there would be no longer be any possibility of considering them morally permissible.

This is why it is simply not good enough to receive the vaccine while quietly mumbling about double effects and remote cooperation. Headlines such as ‘Pope Calls Coronavirus Vaccinations an Ethical Obligation’ in the New York Times do not tell the whole story.

Catholics absolutely must demand that an alternative be provided. Just as Humanae Vitae once called on scientists “especially those who are Catholics” to pool their research efforts, so today we need a new call for scientists to develop and test vaccines without the use of fetal material. In this regard I fear the Vatican has not been clear enough. If there are any medical research scientists reading – get on to it!

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ART AND DEVOTION

The fullness of Faith Caroline Farey on a picture of Mary that includes all three stages of salvation history

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ou will have seen many statues of the Blessed Virgin, very often carrying the Christ child, and there are almost as many paintings.

This one is by an unknown 15th century Netherlandish painter who is skilled in the style of the great Flemish artist, Jan van Eyck. We know that in that period, so steeped in a Catholic, sacramental world view, every detail has significance to remind us of the ‘great things’ God has done for us in the history of our salvation.

The greatest paintings, from the point of view of a fullness of faith, will include all three stages of salvation history: from the preparations and prefigurations of ultimate salvation found in the Old Testament, the fulfilment of those in Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit bringing that fulfilment to the ends of the earth, to the churches in each of our towns. This is one of those paintings.

To gain a preliminary understanding of the artist’s mind in depicting this stabat mater, the mother, standing here in her scarlet robe with her son, Jesus, let us begin by looking at the background.

What the museum calls a ‘flamboyant Gothic niche’, we can see is thoroughly ecclesial, not domestic as it is often depicted, nor a garden setting. In this painting we are given the architecture of a small chapel with stone niches, statues, a canopy and the floral stonework of a chancel arch, that is, the archway that leads into the sanctuary, the holy place of God. It is here that Mary, the new ‘holy place’ of God, is in her true home, the Church, the house of God and, on earth, in the local church.

This is exactly what is written in gold embroidery and white pearls on a green velvet canopy. ‘DOMVS DEI EST ET PORTA C[O]ELI’. The words

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are those of Jacob after his vision of the ladder reaching to heaven: ‘This is [none other than] the house of God and [this is] the gate of heaven.’

(Genesis 28:17, my italics). The canopy and its proclamation are ‘tied’ to the stonework with green ribbons and thus have a living connection with the church building. They are also directly over Mary’s head and thus speak also of her.

To visibly confirm this double proclamation, the blue sky of the heavens can be seen through the church architecture as though through a stone-screened doorway and a cloth of heavenly blue, richly embroidered in gold, hangs down from the canopy.

Behind the Virgin’s head we can see the gold design flowing around her hair like a halo or even a crown. Then notice on the left-hand side, that this glorious cloth drapes over a seat, or altar, before it continues down to the ground where it becomes the very carpet for her feet.

On the step under the Virgin’s feet, carved in the stone, are more words from the Old Testament which ultimately point also to the Blessed Virgin: IPSA EST [MVLIER] QVAM PR[A] EPARAVIT DOM[INV]S FILIO D[OMI]NI MEI ‘Let her be [the woman] whom the Lord has appointed for my master's son.’ (Genesis 24:44). The words are those of a servant of Abraham who was sent to find a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac. The woman is Rebekah, of whom her sisters say, ‘may our sister be the mother of thousands of ten thousands’ (Gen 24:61). These words are fulfilled by Mary, ‘appointed’ as mother of the Son of God, and also by the Church as mother and bride, with thousands of faithful as her children.

Returning to the intricate stonework, the choice of the figures, presented as four stone statues, gives us the depth of the story portrayed here, beginning with Moses who is represented in the upper statue on the left. We know this is Moses from the rays of light that are recorded as ‘shining forth’ from his face, that came to be portrayed like bull’s horns. When Moses came down the mountain with the two tablets of stone ‘the skin of his face shone’ (Ex 34:29). Moses received the decalogue, the ‘ten words’ from God, according to which the chosen people of Israel were to live until the definitive Word of God became flesh.

The statue on the upper right is named as the prophet Isaiah who is pointing down to the young virgin mother with the forefinger of his left hand, that is, to the virgin who will conceive and bear a son (Isaiah 7:14) ‘and his name will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God’ (Is 9:6).

The two lower statues complete the story surrounding the central scene. They are personifications of the Church on the left and the Synagogue on the right. The lady ‘Synagogue’ holds the two tablets of the decalogue in one hand and a staff, signifying authority, in the other. The staff most probably has a budding top, suggestive of the rod of Aaron and his God-given authority for the house of Israel. She is portrayed blindfolded and stooped as she stumbles away from the vibrant and living figures of Mary and her son Jesus. The ‘veil’ over her eyes is reminiscent of the veiled faces of the people of the old covenant that St Paul speaks about to the Corinthians saying “…when they read the old testament that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away … when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed.’ (2 Cor 3: 14-16).

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ART AND DEVOTION The lady ‘Church’ on the other hand, has no veil; ‘And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another’. (2 Cor 3:18). Lady ‘Church’ beholds the glory of the Lord in human flesh, in the arms of his mother who was the first to be ‘changed into his likeness’ from the first moment of her conception and Lady Church follows.

She is also crowned, as Mary is in heaven, and she carries a different staff, no longer standing for the authority of the old covenant but for that of the cross.

Lady Church, as she contemplates the woman and child in the chapel scene, unites herself to it yet more completely by carrying a chalice. At Mass, this holds the blood of the new covenant which was “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:28). This took place when Mary was standing by the cross of Jesus.

Mary’s scarlet dress reminds us of this moment when Christ’s blood was poured out for mankind.

Finally, let us contemplate the beautiful young woman in the rich scarlet cloak carrying the child wrapped only in a white cloth, reminiscent of the swaddling cloth of his birth or the shroud he wore at his death, hence the corporal, ‘body cloth’, used for the sacred host at Mass.

There is a reversal of riches depicted here which illustrates St Paul’s words, ‘You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor 8:9).

The Son of God became poor, especially in the manger, on the altar of the cross and in the tomb, while the rich dress of Mary symbolises the treasures of heavenly grace he has lavished upon her (Eph 1:8) and upon us all in the graces of the Church’s sacraments. Jesus’ ver y loving embrace of his mother shows that it is entirely the love of God that has wrought this.

Title: Virgin and Child in a Niche.

Artist Unknown.

Medium: Oil on wood Dimensions:23 x 12 1/8 in.

Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1889 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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FEATURE

Fr Reggie Foster and his book Joseph Shaw bids farewell to the King of Catholic Latin

F

r Reginald Foster, uncrowned King of Catholic Latin, died on Christmas Day 2020, at the age of 81. He was a Discalced Carmelite, and to say that he was an eccentric would be an understatement. There are traditionally-minded Latinists all over the world with fond memories of his classes, but I’ve found him difficult to take seriously since he told an interviewer, in 1994, that he liked to celebrate Mass in the nude.

In 2015 his teaching system was crystalised in the form of a massive tome, the Ossa Latinitatis Sola, with help from collaborators. Although I confess, I am still only about half-way through it, after a year, I think I can give readers a general impression of the distinctive Foster approach.

Foster frequently boasts that he doesn’t use grammatical tables: no amo, amas, amat or mensa, mensa, mensam. Again, he regards the usual names of cases and tenses as potentially misleading, so creates entirely new ones. The Accusative becomes ‘the object function’, and the Ablative ‘the by-with-from function’.

Tenses become ‘Time 1’, ‘Time 2’ and so on, with variants to distinguish active and passive, and indicative and subjunctive. Conjugations of verbs are renamed ‘Blocks’, and Declensions of nouns are ‘Groups’.

Foster introduces each new point of grammar not with a neatly labelled table, but with a paragraph of dense, though folksy, prose, in which he simply tells you what the different endings are for the tense or group of nouns at issue are, noting how they differ those of similar words. He then illustrates their usage with a few examples, and moves on. There are no exercises.

Foster insists that the best way to get an understanding of a point is through seeing it illustrated in Latin writing, and the book includes an enormous quantity of Latin text. However, this is not arranged by difficulty or by what kind of grammatical point it might

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Fr Reginald Foster: mixed feelings about the past

illustrate, and there is no apparatus of vocabulary, translation, or other help to assist the student. Clearly a Latin teacher is needed to take advantage of this material.

Does the Foster system work? The idiosyncratic terminology must have contributed to a feeling of solidarity among the select gang taught by Reggie.

I don’t suppose this was his explicit

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FEATURE intention, but the book contains little insider jokes, and the slang of a clique.

The pronouns are called ‘the sixteen’ because there are sixteen of them, like the choir, and isn’t that just hilarious?

The exceptions to some rule or other are called ‘the thirty-two’ (is this a joke too?). This makes for camaraderie on a summer course but doesn’t work so well in a book.

Foster’s new terminology has the potential to mislead just as the traditional one did, because no terminology is perfect. The ‘object function’, after all, has other uses besides denoting the direct object of a verb. Foster likes the massive Lewis and Short dictionary, and refers to the venerable Latin grammar book Gildersleeve and Lodge , but these will tell you (for example) that the pronoun ad takes the accusative, not the ‘object function’. This means that if you want to follow Reggie, you have to know both his terminology and the normal kind. Given this, I can’t help but think the new terminology is a bit self-indulgent.

There is also something deeply strange, if not actually autistic, about the idea that ‘Time 1’ and ‘Time 2’ is easier to understand and remember than ‘Present’ and ‘Imperfect’. By the time we get to ‘Time 4s’, the Pluperfect Subjunctive (I think—I may have lost track), I was just begging him to stop.

As I ploughed through the book I kept wondering if Foster, and perhaps the best of his devoted students, was blessed with a photographic memory. The lesson most clearly imprinted on my mind from the book is the huge value of those maligned tables. One little table contains such a vast amount of information, so simple to find and remember, and so easy to compare with other tables to see exactly how one noun or verb differs from another. To get this information from Foster, you have to wade through paragraphs of meandering verbiage, which are not cross-referenced. For those who find Foster’s approach easy to follow, I have nothing but respect: their powers of recall clearly exceed mine. But to claim that his approach is superior defies common sense.

Some may be intimidated by tables, but doing without them does not open up Latin to the less gifted: it is just as likely to close it to them.

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Terminological confusions aside, many intermediate Latinists like myself will benefit from reading through this book, simply because it is always helpful to read a new different explanation of a grammatical point.

Sometimes Foster comes out with really helpful ways of putting things.

And sometimes he’s not so great. I actually think the prize for this aspect of Latin pedagogy belongs to that staple of the old-fashioned schoolroom, Kennedy’s Latin Primer: for clear and succinct explanations, Kennedy is hard to beat, and he provides excellent examples. Foster’s exempla are not invariably well chosen: Martial’s epigrams, for example, appear to be as incomprehensible in Reggie’s English translation as they had been in Latin.

Something which may annoy Mass of Ages readers is that while Foster talks about reading the Latin of all eras, he hardly ever refers to the liturgy, quotes the post-Vatican II obscure ‘neo-Vulgate’ bible in preference to St Jerome’s, and ignores Medieval Latin. One linguistic development found in the ancient Vulgate, relating to participles, he rejects as ‘spaghetti Latin’; the expanded role of the subjunctive in Later Latin he regards as a symptom of ‘corruption’. This is not the broadmindedness one would expect from a custodian of the vast and rambling mansion which is Christian Latin.

Foster’s purism also affected the Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis, in which he was closely involved. This can be found on the Vatican website, and is certainly good for a laugh: ‘jeep’ is autocinētum locis iniquis aptum, a snack bar thermopólium potórium et gustatórium. It is reminiscent of the Académie Française trying to insist that the French for a newspaper ‘scoop’ is the headline-friendly une information en exclusivité. What Latin authors comfortable in their own skin, from Cicero to Albert the Great, did, when a new word was needed, was to use loan words and new coinages.

Devotion to the neo-Vulgate is also nurtured by J.F. Collins’ Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, and Louise Riley-Smith’s A New Approach to Latin for the Mass. It seems strange, in teaching Christian Latin, to use a 1960s-era pastiche instead of the real thing, a text at the foundations of Catholic culture, which guided scholars and inspired poets for more sixteen centuries.

One of the puzzles of the Catholic world since the 1970s is the prickly attitude some Latinists have towards the ancient Latin liturgy and tradition.

Perhaps they feel they have to work harder than others to prove their loyalty to the brave new world ushered in by the reform. In interviews Foster complained about the ‘polarisation’ of the question of Latin in the Church: he found it annoying that Latin was regarded as a part of a package with theological conservativism, and he struggled, in vain, to overturn the stereotype, with the help of profane language and a blue boilersuit.

I heard an intriguing anecdote about him from a former student. Something came up in a class which reminded him of the Dies Irae. To the astonishment of the students, Foster started singing it, in cracked voice, but with a perfect recall of the melody. Then he stopped himself with a dismissive remark: ‘oh well, that’s all over now’. Foster, like others of his generation, no doubt had mixed feelings about the past, and may not have wanted to acknowledge all of them. He, too, was a victim of the post-Conciliar crisis.

Foster was clearly an inspirational teacher, and to be fair to all involved, attempts to capture in text-book form the humour, energy, and charisma of a great teacher often fall a bit flat. I fear that this has happened in this case. What I can do, however, is to recommend once again the Latin Mass Society’s own beginners’ ‘teach yourself ’ Latin coursebook, Simplicissimus, available from our online shop, with exercises and answer key, carefully chosen illustrative passages with translations, vocabulary lists, and lots of lovely tables at the back. All the examples, exercises, and passages are taken from the ancient liturgy, including its ancient Vulgate lectionary. If you have a vague idea what ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ and ‘Gloria in excelsis’ mean, you have a head start. You can also sign up for online or residential courses (see announcements in this edition of Mass of Ages.)

On two points we can all agree with Reggie: that you don’t have to be a genius to learn Latin, and that, as he put it, ‘it’s out of this world!’

Ossa Latinitatis Sola ad Mentem Reginaldi Rationemque: The Mere Bones of Latin According to the Thought and System of Reginald (2015)

by Fr Reginald Foster and others.

736pp.

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ARCHITECTURE

Sligo, nave and high altar, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

At work in Ireland Paul Waddington on the Irish churches of George Goldie

G

eorge Goldie was born in York in 1828 and educated at Ushaw College. At the age of seventeen, he was apprenticed to the architectural firm of Weightman and Hadfield which practiced in Sheffield, and, on completing his apprenticeship, he became a partner in that business. By 1860, Goldie had moved to London and was in practice on his own, although he later took on Charles Edwin Child as a partner. In 1875, George took on his son, Edward, as an apprentice, and he became a partner in 1880.

Almost the entire architectural output of George Goldie was for the Catholic Church in one form or another.

He designed around 50 churches, three cathedrals, and at least twelve convents, as well as many orphanages, colleges and presbyteries. In addition, he was

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responsible for numerous extensions and improvements to churches designed by other architects. Although most of his work was in England, Goldie built at least a dozen churches in Scotland, and was very active in Ireland. His Irish work included two cathedrals, six convents and at least sixteen churches.

It may come as a surprise that an architect working in Sheffield and London should be doing so much work in Ireland. Part of the explanation may be that there were insufficient Irish architects capable of undertaking the design of the many churches which were being built at the time. However, it is likely that Goldie was introduced to Ireland through the Vincentian Fathers, for whom he designed St Vincent’s Church in Sheffield in 1856.

Goldie’s first Church in Ireland was in Charlestown, a small settlement in Co Mayo. Opened in 1858, St James’ Church (originally dedicated to St Charles Borromeo) is a modest building.

Unusually, it does not include many of the hallmarks that later became features of Goldie’s churches, except perhaps the large reredos and the conspicuous Stations of the Cross. It has a simple belfry perched on the west end gable.

Nearby, at Bohola, is the Church of the St Joseph & Immaculate Conception. In this church, which was opened in 1859, we begin to see some of Goldie’s typical features. Alas, the reredos incorporating statues and a prominent monstrance throne have gone, as has the pulpit, but a very typical baptismal font has survived, as has the High Altar, albeit moved to a forward position. Like the Charlestown

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ARCHITECTURE pyramidal roof resembles those of many other Goldie churches, and the tympanum of the main entrance closely resembles that at St Wilfrid’s in York. The relatively short cylindrical columns of the nave are typical Goldie features, as are the extended wall mounted shafts that support the vaulting.

Less typical of Goldie is the arrangement of the sanctuary. No doubt Bishop Gillooly was looking for something rather special, and Goldie responded with an elaborate white marble High Altar approached by six steps, but instead of the usual reredos, he provided an elaborate brass tabernacle with brass framed tableau at either side.

The High Altar is surmounted by a brass baldacchino supported on richly coloured marble columns.

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, exterior

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Goldie’s greatest work in Ireland was the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Sligo. In 1858 the Vincentian priest, Fr Laurence Gillooly, became the bishop of the Diocese of Elphin, and during his 37 years as bishop, he was responsible for the building of 30 churches in the diocese.

The bishop employed George Goldie as the architect for several of these, including the cathedral at Sligo, which was started in 1869 and opened 1874.

The Cathedral occupies a prominent position on high ground, and its 210 ft tower dominates the city skyline.

Unusually for Goldie, the cathedral is built in a Romanesque style, and is T-shaped rather than cruciform. The seven-bay nave is of great height, and includes a triforium as well as clerestory windows. A full height rounded apse with ambulatory at the eastern end accommodates the sanctuary.

Beyond the ambulatory, Goldie provided a mortuary chapel, which is now used as the baptistery.

Despite being in a different style from most of his churches, Goldie managed to incorporate many of his hallmark features.

The prominent tower capped with a

© caoimhindebhailis.org

church, the Bohola church has a belfry, but here we have something far more ostentatious, and unmistakably the work of Goldie.

Another one of Goldie’s early works in Ireland, although on a much larger scale, was the Cathedral of the Annunciation and St Nathy at Ballaghadereen in County Roscommon. Ballaghadereen is a very small town, and it became the unlikely location of the cathedral of the Diocese of Achonry because Viscount Dillon donated the site and was also willing to donate stone from a nearby quarry that he owned. The foundations of the cathedral had been laid in 1854 under the direction of John Sterling Butler, but work was soon suspended due to a lack of funds. When building resumed, George Goldie was the architect, and it is presumed that he was selected because Viscount Dillon’s Agent, Charles Strickland, was a relative of Thomas Strickland, one of Goldie’s fellow students at Ushaw College.

Goldie was constrained in his design by the existing foundations, which were for an eight-bay nave with side aisles and a two-bay chancel. Although Goldie had to work to a restricted budget, he did manage to provide a building of considerable height, which allowed the inclusion of an impressive six light East window. This is above a marble High Altar and Reredos, which are in a style typical of Goldie.

Most noticeably, the reredos includes a monstrance throne with a very tall canopy.

When the cathedral was opened in 1860, it was incomplete, and it was not until 1912 that the tower and spire were added by W H Byrne to a design somewhat different from Goldie’s conception.

High Altar at Mount St Alphonsus, Limerick

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, exterior

Some of George Goldie’s finest Irish work appears in churches designed by other architects. An example would be the Redemptorist Church of Mount St Alphonsus in Limerick. This large church had been designed by the English architect Thomas Hardwick and completed in 1862. Only three years later in 1865, George Goldie was engaged to make improvements. He installed a new High Altar and reredos, several side altars and a spectacular pulpit, as well as designing new decorative schemes. He returned in 1876 to give the church a tower. Although its design is typical of Goldie, it is topped with a somewhat squat octagonal spire.

Goldie also worked on the Jesuit Church of the Sacred Heart in Limerick, where he installed a new High Altar and side altars as well as providing a new decorative scheme throughout the church. This church is now served by the Institute of Christ the King, and was featured in an earlier article in this series. It is gratifying that Goldie’s work is currently being restored by the Institute, and that the church is used daily for the traditional Latin liturgies.

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FEATURE

Our Lady of Glastonbury Dom Bede Rowe, Rector of the Shrine, on a living Benedictine tradition in the West Country

I

t is night. The tabernacle lamp glows softly as the shrouded figures begin to illuminate the Church - first through the glow of choir candles, then a harsher light. The shadows of the sanctuary are dispelled. The rest of the Church lies in darkness. Flickering votive flames cast the long shades of the saints onto her walls.

The town sleeps.

The men don their garments - black on black. The books are laid out. The lights are lit. They stand in silence. Waiting for the time, for the clock to reach its appointed moment. The hands creep to half past four. The hour has come. The praise of God is to begin. They bow, and move with gracious solemnity to their work, to the task allotted them by God. The sons of Saint Benedict enter into the House of God, and bend the knee before the One who made them. They kneel to recollect who they are and what it is they do. At a sign, they stand and trace upon themselves the mark of their Lord, the Holy Cross of Christ, their means of salvation. The ancient third psalm begins: “Dómine, quid multiplicáti sunt qui tríbulant me?” - recited at St Benedict’s command…

At any point for almost a thousand years, from the Holy Rule being adopted by the monks of Glastonbury, to the destruction of the Abbey by the King’s forces at the time of the so-called reformation, this description of the Night Office would have been more or less accurate. In this most holy place, the oldest shrine of Our Lady in our country, and possibly the oldest north of the Alps, the praises of God have been sung by monks, and for most of that time by the monks of St Benedict. The very ground and monastic ruins are infused with prayer.

But the description given above is not just history - it is what happens now. It happens every day in the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Glastonbury. In August 2019, Bishop Declan Lang, Bishop of Clifton, canonically promulgated the statutes of the Community of Our Lady of Glastonbury as a private clerical association, living under the Rule of Our Holy Father St Benedict.

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From that day, our community existed and the monastic Office was again taken up in Glastonbury. We were ordained as Diocesan secular priests, but over many years we asked the Bishop for permission to live a common life under the rule of St Benedict. Eventually, after much prayer, he granted us permission to form a rule of life and live in common. We took up the Rule of Our Holy Father St Benedict, and put it into practice for our day, and in our time. We have just put forward our constitutions to become a Public Association. Pope Francis limited the power of Diocesan Bishops to approve new communities, so this is the highest level we can currently reach under the authority of the Bishop. We are ‘Diocesan Benedictines’.

Diocesan Benedictines is a fairly new idea, though of course in the 19th century Abbé Guéranger, the founder of the Abbey of Solesmes, and Abbé Muard, the founder of the monastery of La Pierre-qui-Vire, had both been Diocesan Priests. It means that we are not part of a Benedictine Congregation, such as the Subiaco Congregation or the English Benedictine Congregation. Rather, we are

founded by the Diocesan Bishop, and it is his responsibility to ‘visit’ us, to make sure that we are living according to our Rule. As with anything, of course there are strengths and weaknesses in this system, but it suits us at this time, so that we can pursue our work, and sing our prayers in the way we want.

These two elements are essential in the life of any monastery, ‘ora et labora’ - work and prayer. Our ‘work’ is to serve the parishes which the Bishop gives us. We are the Parish Priests of four parishes: Our Lady in Glastonbury, St Michael in Shepton Mallet, Ss Joseph and Teresa in Wells, and Our Lady Queen of Apostles in Cheddar, and our monastery is the presbytery at Glastonbury. This is what gives us our name, the Community of Our Lady of Glastonbury, and it is also our link with those generations of monks and their ruined Abbey.

The parishes are normal diocesan parishes in which we offer the New Rites of Mass and the Sacraments as correctly and with as much dignity as possible.

Our ‘prayer’ is the heart of our community. Our conventual life is according to the ancient cursus of Psalms

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FEATURE and is sung in Latin. We sing the entire traditional Benedictine Office from the Breviarium Monasticum, and the daily Conventual Mass is in the Extraordinary Form. Our Office books were printed in 1934, and we have not changed the order of Psalms which St Benedict gave us. We have begun to sing more and more of the Office to the Gregorian chants and tones.

The only Office still sung predominantly on one single tone (recto tono) is Matins at 4.30am, but even then, who could resist an ancient setting of the Te Deum from Gloucester? But after an hour of singing you’ve warmed up!

We are often asked why we are not connected to the other monasteries.

This is a bit complicated. Not only are Benedictines not like other ‘orders’ as each house is independent, to a greater or lesser extent, but we found ourselves in an interesting situation. The more liturgically traditional monasteries in our country (Farnborough, Quarr, Prinknash) do not run parishes, while the more active (more or less the English Benedictines) are not overly traditional. If you add the fact that monasteries are either shrinking, moving, closing, or, if they are thriving, then they are just not founding new communities… well, you see our position.

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Being Diocesan Benedictines allows us the freedom to sing our Office and offer our Conventual Mass in the traditional form, while working within the Diocesan parish structure. Most of the new communities of Benedictines (Silverstream, the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France, and Notre Dame Priory in Tasmania) are founded under the authority of the Diocesan Bishop.

We are privileged to be under the protection of Our Lady of Glastonbury.

Legend says that St Joseph of Arimathea built a wattle church when he came to these shores. Whether or not this is true, it is an historical fact that Glastonbury was the site of a very ancient Christian settlement. When the Saxons arrived in Glastonbury in 658AD, there was already a church here, which was known as the ‘Old Church’. This church, whose beginnings were already lost in the mists of time by the seventh century, was dedicated to Our Lady. King Ina’s Charter, issued around 694ad, granted land in Glastonbury, and referred to the ‘wooden basilica’ as Ecclesia Vetusta Beatissimæ Virginis - the Old Church of the Most Blessed Virgin.

This document went further and described this Church as ‘the foremost Church in Britain, the fount and source of all religion’.

We know that at any point, if the dead rose from the desecrated Abbey, which is

just over the road from our church, and they entered in solemn procession the present Shrine of Our Lady, then they would sit with us, and their voices would blend with ours and they would sing the prayers that St Benedict commanded, in the age-old language of the Church. They would assist at the august sacrifice of the Mass, with the texts they knew, and the ritual actions which sustained their lives and for which they gave their lives. It is our joy to pick up this tradition of the old monks of Glastonbury. No matter where we are, or what we become, we will wear this most ancient title of Our Lady.

We pray that others will come and join us. Men, do you have a vocation to this life?

Is God calling you to become a Benedictine monk? Will you join the black robed army who give their lives to sing the praises of God, through stability and obedience in the ‘School of the Lord’s Service’?

And what of those old, long-dead monks? We stand with them, we sing with them, and we kneel with them in adoration of the God who made us. We are brothers of the cloister, men for God, St Benedict’s sons. glastonburymonastery.co.uk glastonbury.community@cliftondiocese. com

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COMMENT

Battles with the demonic Mary O’Regan remembers Malachi Martin

M

alachi Martin was born in Kerry in 1921; July 23 marks the 100th year anniversary of his birth. Martin trained as a Jesuit in old Catholic Ireland, and later described the rigors of his seminary days: when he arrived, they confiscated his hair gel and cologne and taught him to obey without question. A firstclass scholar, he became fluent in eight languages and was an expert in Semitic handwriting from the time of Abraham.

In his 30s, he became a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and acted as Cardinal Augustin Bea's private secretary, a role he held for six years, from 1958 to 1964. During this heady time, Martin said he read the Third Secret of Fatima and came to know the major players who orchestrated the changes which ravaged Mother Church.

In an interview with Bernard Jansen, Martin revealed a telling incident when, during the Vatican Council, Cardinal Bea came to Martin's room in some distress.

Bea had just overheard Hans Küng saying that, unlike the Protestant rebels of old, he and his cohorts were going to stay inside the Church and change it from within. Martin never shared his reaction to Cardinal Bea's distress, yet the mere fact that he was Bea's close confidante is itself troubling because Bea was an influential ecumenist, and in the encounter with Küng, Bea had realised his folly in accommodating

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Protestantism. Now he was horrified when he saw that his desire to be accommodating was going to be used to make his own Catholicism unrecognisable from the time before the Council.

Martin and Bea parted ways and in the mid-1960s Martin left the Jesuits, and went to America. In the coming decades, he gave the impression he had always been an arch traditionalist. He became a celebrated author who defended the Traditional Latin Mass.

There is, however, a gap in our understanding of Martin's development as a Traditional Catholic. Martin's past is so mysterious that there was a time when I thought there were two separate authors with the same name because I could not fathom how Martin had written Jesus Now in 1973 and Hostage to the Devil in 1976. I thought they must be two separate people. But no, it was the same Martin who wrote both books.

In Jesus Now, Martin is adamant there will be no second coming of Christ and he brags about his closeness to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a man whose books contained, according to the Church, ‘grave doctrinal errors’.

Yet, three years after Jesus Now hit the shelves, Martin published Hostage to the Devil, which has a section where he refutes de Chardin.

My contention is that Martin had a conversion between Jesus Now and Hostage to the Devil, and changed from being an admirer of Teilhard de Chardin to being his arch-critic. I believe he wrote himself into Hostage to the Devil as ‘Father David,’ a professor of palaeontology who has allowed himself to be influenced by de Chardin’s constructs of Christ, and who must submit to an exorcism before he can himself perform exorcisms.

Father David must free himself from de Chardin's - and thus, Satan's – influence. He learns that his acceptance of de Chardin's dangerous reduction of the Person of Christ means he does not have sufficient faith to call on the power of Christ to exorcise a young priest.

The first time Father David tries to exorcise the priest, the demon speaking through the young priest taunts him, “You have adopted the Lord of Light, like I have, you old fool! Physician, cure yourself!” When Father David is at a loss how to continue the exorcism, the demon mocks him, “And you were trying to exorcise me?”

Only after Father David rejects de Chardin's heretical teaching that Christ is merely the pinnacle of man's evolution, can he successfully perform the Rite of Exorcism.

To cast Christ as the omega point, He who is the best creation of an evolutionary process, is still to emphasize his humanity over his divinity, and in some ways, this is most deadly for a priest because it is all too easy for a priest to see himself as a man like Christ, but just lower down the scale, when in fact the priest has to invoke Christ's authority as Saviour of all men in order to expel a demon.

'Whatever these controversies, I am a fan of Martin.

And perhaps his own conversion came about through battles with the demonic' If Martin was really writing about himself, he employed some heavy disguise, but as in Father David's case, it would appear that Malachi Martin was cleansed of his infatuation with de Chardin.

Whatever these controversies, I’m a fan of Martin. And perhaps his own conversion came about through battles with the demonic, battles that finally convinced him of the Divinity of Christ as Lord of Lords who has dominion over all.

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FEATURE

The scholar priest Charles A. Coulombe remembers linguist and adventurer Adrian Fortescue

A

mongst both Latin-Mass going Catholics and very high Anglo-Catholics there is a book that for many decades has been the bible for Masters of Ceremonies: The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, or else simply “Fortescue,” after its author.

Given its high erudition and specialisation, the reader might be forgiven for thinking that the writer was a cloistered monk, or perhaps a scholar sequestered in some Oxbridge library. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, Fr Adrian Fortescue (1874-1923) led such an exciting life that he is often described as an “adventurer” by biographers. In her 1939 book, There’s Rosemary…

There’s Rue , British writer Rosemary Fortescue told of an incident regarding Fr Adrian. A friend had told her husband, historian Sir John Fortescue, that the fascinating priest was not in fact related to them. On hearing about this rumour, Fr Fortescue wrote Sir John: “We were cousins in the 14th century. Mine is the elder but undistinguished branch. It did remain however loyal to its King and Faith which is more than yours did."

Lady Fortescue went on to comment that “We discovered him to be, in spite of his early middle age, a man of immense learning. He was a marvelous linguist, and enjoyed learning abstruse and difficult tongues and dialects. He knew and loved the desert tribes; had traveled in the east disguised as an Arab and once had to kill a man in selfdefence. He was an expert on old church music, on the liturgy, ritual and vestments of the Roman Catholic Church of which he was an ordained priest; a very good watercolour artist

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Fr Adrian Fortescue: no label easily fits him, except one - Catholic

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FEATURE besides being an erudite scholar with a comprehensive knowledge of the classics; he appeared to read every book that was written from abstruse scientific works to trashy novels, which, when sleepless, he devoured at a rate of three a night.”

A direct descendant of Bl Sir Adrian Fortescue, the Knight of Malta and Dominican Tertiary martyred under Henry VIII in 1539, Fortescue came from an ancient gentry family with noble branches.

His parents were Edward Fortescue, a famous Anglo-Catholic cleric, and Gertrude Martha Robins, granddaughter of the 8th Earl of Thanet. At the time they met, Fr Fortescue’s parents were both based in Dundee, Scotland – the already widowed Edward as Canon of the Anglican Cathedral, and Gertrude as an Anglican nun. There they met, and their mutual interest in Catholicism grew alongside their interest in one another. They converted to Catholicism and married two years before Adrian was born. Having been received as a layman into the Catholic Church, Edward became a school administrator. Five years later, he died.

But these formative Scots influences upon young Adrian not only sent him to the Scots College in Rome in 1891, they made him a Jacobite. So it was that he prayed most devoutly while in Rome at the tomb of the three last Stuart Kings in St Peter’s. A decade later, at Queen Victoria’s death, he jotted down in Latin in his diary her demise as that of “an elderly lady commonly taken to be the Queen of England.”

In 1894, having finished at Rome, he was sent to the University of Innsbruck, being ordained in Brixen in 1898 – and receiving an academic award directly from Kaiser Franz Josef himself. He was in truth an amazing scholar, eventually mastering 11 languages and studying all sort of arcane topics. After getting his doctorate of divinity from Innsbruck in 1905, he travelled through the Near East – learning about the Eastern Churches in and out of Union with Rome, and having the sorts of excitements his

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distant cousin-by-marriage referred to earlier.

It was at this point that he returned to England. The hierarchy was rather nonplussed as to what to do with him. But in the meantime, the Catholic Church in the British Isles was divided over a number of issues – some of which seem trivial today. The Byzantine architecture of Westminster Cathedral is a lasting memorial to the then incumbent’s refusal to grant victory either to the Gothicists (of whom Fr Fortescue was definitely one) or the Romanisers.

Others were more substantive. The Modernist heresy was in full swing; while Fr Fortescue was certainly no Modernist on the one hand, he resented bitterly what he considered St Pius X’s centralising of the Church on the other. Although we may rightly feel shock at his dislike of the Saintly Pontiff, with 20/20 hindsight, we might well wonder in view of current events – to say nothing of the aftermath of the Council – whether his views might not have been entirely unmerited.

At any rate, he was not one to let that sort of thing get in the way of his priestly vocation. In 1907, Fr Fortescue was assigned to build a new church, St Hugh of Lincoln, in an equally new town, Letchworth.

At first saying Mass in a shed, he gathered parishioners, the church grew – and at last, he was able to build a fitting home for it. But much of the money for the new structure came from his own pocket – he actually wrote Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described to raise funds for the church. Despite his continuing to pour out various writings, he worked unstintingly for his parishioners, as well as the poor and needy. Much as his letters and diaries show how much he craved the life of the scholar and how wearing pastoral duties (for which he considered himself unfit) were on him, his strong sense of duty never allowed what he wanted to do to get into the way of what was necessary. In time, this ripened into a deep love of his flock that was cordially returned.

On top of his pastoral duties, he was also appointed Professor of Church

History at St Edmund’s College, Ware (one of the two successors to Douai, Ushaw being the other).

It has been remarked that – as with Mgr Knox – he was wasted.

Regardless of the merits of that charge, it is doubtful that he would have shared it. He was diagnosed with cancer shortly before Christmas of 1922 and prepared to meet his end in an extremely edifying manner. He wrote to the President of St Edmund’s before his operation, “So I have been through all the Christmas festivities, the music at Matins, and midnight Mass, the garland, and little presents and cards arriving, with this in front of me all the time…. I should like to think that you will all remember me kindly and say Mass for a soul that has no hope but in the mercy of God.” His final sermon to his flock on 31 December was entitled “Christ our Friend and Comforter.” Therein Fr Fortescue set forth the mysteries of Christmas and the Epiphany, ending the homily with the words “That is all I have to say.” He died after receiving the Sacraments in the cancer hospital at Dollis Hill on 11 February.

His funeral was the largest any parish priest in England had received up to that time. Considered one of the Founding Fathers of Letchworth, the town honoured him after he died, of which effort Michael Davies marvelled: “A memorial exhibition of Adrian Fortescue’s work was organized in the Letchworth Public Library in 1923, and simply to read the catalogue puts one in awe of the man. There are sections listing his books and pamphlets, notes for his lectures, music, writing and illuminations, bookplates, heraldic and other designs, vestments that he designed, drawings, watercolor and pencil sketch books, and letters in many languages. There were, in fact, so many exhibits that they could not all be shown at the same time and needed to be changed frequently.” Both Michael Davies and Fr Aidan Nichols OP have written fascinatingly about him. No label easily fits him, except one: Catholic.

None other really needed.

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WINE

West Country wines Sebastian Morello visits the Sharpham winery in Devon and recommends a visit to St Mary’s Totnes

I

n the high medieval period, Europe experienced the effects of ‘global warming’, or perhaps it was ‘climate change’. In any case, the response of the English was not that of founding some new congregation of flagellants called, say, the Order of Friars Extinxion Rebellion. The newly conquered English looked up at the ever-intensifying sun and thought not of some imminent catastrophe and the population-control programmes that would allegedly save them from such a disaster. They did not panic and look for a Nordic child-sage to utter oracular allocutions about odd and novel penances. Instead, they thought of booze. They proceeded to implore their French masters, and the ecclesiastics these new rulers had planted, to teach them viticulture. The English must have known something already, as the 8th century St Alcuin of York had longed for the wines of England from his seat at the beer-sloshing court of Charlemagne.

Be that as it may, the great English historian, Dom William of Malmesbury, tells us that by 1125 the hillsides of Gloucestershire were covered with vines producing wines that he insists were as good as any French stuff.

The French may not be quick to agree with Dom William’s assertion. Our neighbours across the Channel have had little choice, however, but to give up their seat to English wineries on a number of occasions over the past few years. Sparkling nectar from Albion has routinely shamed the celebrated fizz of Champagne in blind tastings. The jury is in: there are excellent English winemakers. At some point I will share my musings on the wonderful wines of Kent’s Chapel Down winery (yet another that has made the French grumble).

This time, however, I wish to point the readers of this quarterly to the wines of Sharpham.

The area around Sharpham is of personal importance for me. At the age of fourteen, I was holidaying with my parents on the Devonshire coast, just a few miles from the winery. One day, we decided to drive to a nearby monastery

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Sharpham Estate, with its magnificent 18th century house

where my father had once taken a private retreat. Buckfast Abbey church was the first Catholic church I ever visited. I was absolutely flabbergasted by its beauty. Five years later I was received into the Catholic Church on the south coast of India; I travelled back to my country with the naïve expectation that all English Catholic churches would look more or less like Buckfast’s church. Try to imagine my disappointment as I learned the horror story that is the history of Catholic ecclesiastical architecture of the last sixty years.

A few summers ago, I returned to south Devon to holiday with my parents, this time with my wife and daughter. We paid a visit to Buckfast Abbey to attend Holy Mass and venerate the hairshirt of St Thomas More (this was before the monks, very sadly, discontinued the Old Rite). Buckfast, of course, has a wine of its own, a strange caffeinated concoction which is something of a delicacy among modern-day Pictish berserkers.

Some days into our holiday, my father and I snuck off to Sharpham winery.

The beautiful Sharpham estate, with the magnificent 18th century Sharpham House at the centre, is situated on a peninsula sloping down into the River Dart. The land is divided almost equally for Jersey cows and vines, with the latter on the south side enjoying a unique

microclimate produced by the river and the incoming ocean breezes.

What are the cows for? I hear you ask. After a magnificent tour of the vineyards, we returned to the winery for a tasting at which each wine was paired with one of Sharpham’s delicious cheeses. These award-winning cheeses are made from the milk of those Jersey cows, living out their years alongside the grapes whose potion we so relished.

The Loire Valley’s special Madeleine Angevine grape, which thrives in cooler conditions, has found at Sharpham its perfect environment for flourishing.

This grape brings forth a citrusy – but not tart – wine, with peach, apricot and vanilla hints remaining in a long finish.

These wines are superb with locally caught crab.

For red, the options are limited. The pinot noir, frankly, needs work. The Beenleigh Reserve, on the other hand, is a near-perfect red, and is enhanced by any one of Sharpham’s cheeses.

It remains the most award-winning English red wine, and is a classic claretlike blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Unfortunately, at £32 a bottle, one acquires a taste for it to one’s ruin.

The sparkling rosé is not so expensive and is a fun, refreshing, and delicious drink for sharing among friends over an afternoon’s natter.

If our new overlords, who can teach us little – certainly not viticulture – ever fully lift this Orwellian nationwide house arrest, that we may once again enjoy such simple liberties as a holiday in Devon or a glass of wine with friends, I recommend a visit to this part of the country. Totnes’s redstone church, dedicated to St Mary and almost utterly untouched by the iconoclasts of the Reformation, has one of the most magnificent gothic roodscreens. A visit to this church, followed by prayers at the relic of St Thomas More (during which I suggest you pray for a return to Buckfast Abbey of the Mass he daily attended), concluded with a bottle of Sharpham’s sparkling rosé with loved ones – there you have a lovely day ahead of you.

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FEATURE

Communist infiltration?

Kevin J. Symonds looks at the curious history of Dr Bella Dodd and the Catholic Church

D

r Bella Dodd, the famous Communist lawyer who reverted to the Catholic Faith of her youth, is said to have planted some 1,200 men into Catholic seminaries. These men are said to be either Communists or Communist sympathisers who would “co-opt” the Church into serving Communism. This story was a cornerstone of arguments set out in 2002 and 2018 in various publications, in discussions of clerical sex abuse to explain the scandal. A talk given

by Dodd, however, has recently surfaced that challenges this understanding of Bella Dodd and the infiltration of the Catholic Church.

1961 Detroit Lecture In a talk Dodd gave in Detroit on 1 September, 1961, she was asked the following question: “Have you ever met Communists among the Catholic clergy and if so, were these people ever exposed?” Dodd responded: “I never met a Ca-, uh, Communist, uh, who was, uh, a member of the Catholic clergy. Now I say that, not because I’m a Catholic. Because I was familiar with a number of the young ministers in the Protestant, uh, among the Protestant clergy. God bless some of them. They wanted so much to do good.

“The Communist Party used to raise money to send them to seminaries, which would last maybe for one year, two years.

And, uh, then they’d come back and preach the social doctrine. Now, I never had met anyone in the Ca-, uh, among the Catholic clergy. That doesn’t mean that they may not be [Communist]! My feeling is that, uh, the long years of [slight pause] preparation required for the Catholic clergy may deter, uh, the Communist Party line as to putting people in.”

Dodd’s statement appears to run contrary to what many believed about her for many years. Let us see, however, whether there is a contradiction by looking at how some of the more important publications that discussed Bella Dodd discussed the story.

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Bella Dodd: ‘no control over admitting someone to a seminary’

Historical background The November 2000 issue of Christian Order published an article entitled “The Greatest Conspiracy” and listed “The Editor” (Rod Pead) as the author. The overall picture painted by Pead is the following.

There was a worldwide directive in the 1930s from Communist leadership ordering the infiltration of the Catholic Church. Remarks are attributed to Bella Dodd about 1,100 men being put into the priesthood to destroy “the Church from within.” After some editorializing, Dodd is again attributed as having said that these infiltrators were “right now [working] in the highest places in the Church” and that the Catholic Church would be unrecognizable. Not everyone was a cardcarrying Communist as some were just “young radicals,” according to Pead.

Regretfully, the article does not provide citations and the statements attributed to Dodd and others cannot be verified.

Several months later, the publication The Latin Mass Magazine published an interview with the famous Catholic philosopher Dr Alice von Hildebrand.

The interview was entitled “Present at the Demolition” and published in the magazine’s Summer, 2001 issue. During the interview, Dr von Hildebrand made a statement about Bella Dodd and the Church being infiltrated: “It is a matter of public record, for instance, that Bella Dodd, the ex-Communist who reconverted to the Church, openly spoke of the Communist Party’s deliberate infiltration of agents into the seminaries. She told my husband and me that when she was an active party member, she had dealt with no fewer than four cardinals within the Vatican ‘who were working for us’.”

Dr von Hildebrand presents two claims: 1) Bella Dodd “openly spoke of the Communist Party’s deliberate infiltration of agents into the seminaries,” and 2) Dodd privately told the von Hildebrands that she “dealt with no fewer than four cardinals” who were working for Communism within the Vatican. Whether they were actual Communists or just friendly to it was not specified. Von Hildebrand maintained her two claims in the public forum in later years.

In December, 2002, after the clerical sex abuse scandal arose within the United States, Sandra Miesel wrote an article entitled “Swinging at Windmills: A Close Look at Catholic Conspiracy Theories” for Crisis Magazine. In it, Miesel referenced Bella Dodd: “Dodd implausibly claimed to have sent a thousand young men into American seminaries….” Dr Alice von Hildebrand responded in April, 2003 in a letter to the editor of Crisis entitled “A Final Swing.”

Dr von Hildebrand affirmed her two claims from her 2001 interview and added new details. For example, she claimed that Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Dodd’s director, had forbidden her to reveal the names of the four cardinals. Dr von Hildebrand also claimed that Dodd gave a talk in Orange, California in which she admitted she had been told to infiltrate the Catholic seminaries with “Young men who had neither faith nor morals”.

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FEATURE On 28 July, 2003, Toby Westerman, of the web site International News Analysis—Today, published an article entitled “Infiltration of the Catholic Church?” The key to this article was an affidavit, dated 28 March, 2002, that was provided to him by Dr Alice von Hildebrand. The affidavit, however, was from a couple in Texas, Johnine and Paul Leininger and it discussed a talk by Bella Dodd they attended in Orange County, California in the 1960s.

Dodd’s talk was not exclusively about infiltration of the Catholic priesthood. She did remark, according to the Leiningers, on the subject. For our purposes, they essentially affirm Dr Alice von Hildebrand’s two claims. They even add the detail that it was specifically Communist “Party members” who had infiltrated seminaries and the Vatican.

From 2003 to 2016, the claims about Bella Dodd and the infiltration of the Catholic priesthood were discussed on the Internet, and some details were lost or distorted. The story arose in 2016 in an article for Catholic News Agency

by Dr Alice von Hildebrand entitled “Recalling a Hero.” Among other things, she reiterated her belief that the Church and the seminary system was infiltrated and that “evil men” infiltrated the Vatican.

Two years later, the matter came back after the revelation of sex abuse perpetrated by Theodore Cardinal McCarrick. People once again began to ask questions about the origins of clerical sex abuse and the story that Bella Dodd put men “without faith or morals” was a compelling answer.

Making Sense of Matters When one examines carefully all of the available information, some fine distinctions have to be made.

First, with respect to Bella Dodd’s 1961 Detroit lecture, Dodd does not deny that Communists existed among the Catholic clergy. Second, Dodd’s statement that she “never met a Communist who was a member of the Catholic clergy” is not a contradiction of Dr Alice von Hildebrand’s claim about the four cardinals. She did not state that Dodd had physically met the four cardinals. The same is true for the Leininger’s claims in their affidavit.

What about the 1,200 or so men that Dodd allegedly put into the seminaries?

First, she could only have encouraged men to enter seminaries as she had no control over admitting someone to

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‘Dodd gave a talk in Orange, California in which she admitted she had been told to infiltrate the Catholic seminaries’ a seminary. Second, how many became priests? Due to the rigors of a seminary program (indicated by Dodd in her Detroit lecture), the chances that all 1,200 or so were ordained is not likely. Third, a seminarian is not a member of the clergy until later in his formation. No one has demonstrated that Dodd had contact with these men after they became clergymen. In that sense, she “never met” a Communist who was a member of the clergy.

The available documentation also indicates that a distinction has to be made between seminarians and strategicallyplaced Communists within seminaries (or other diocesan structures). In speaking before Congress about Communist infiltration of American education, Dodd indicated that a strategically-placed Communist influencing many teachers could do a lot of damage. If this tactic worked within education, why not use it with seminaries?

Why would Dodd discuss the matter of the cardinals in Orange County but not mention them in Detroit? She was asked if she had ever met a Catholic cleric who was a Communist and if they were ever exposed. Dodd, a trained lawyer and gifted speaker, would have known to address only the precise question to her and not be effusive with her words. As we saw earlier, we don’t know if she had ever physically met the cardinals. We do not possess the details of her talk in Orange County and her reference to the cardinals might have come up in another context.

Conclusion Bella Dodd’s 1961 Detroit lecture presents a challenge for Catholics who believe that she helped infiltrate Catholic seminaries. The challenge forces them to look at underlying presumptions as well as to be critical towards the sources. Those sources have largely rested upon the good reputation of Alice von Hildebrand, herself a titan in Catholic life and thought.

The facts, as they presently stand, indicate that the claims of Dr Alice von Hildebrand and Johnine and Paul Leininger are not necessarily contradicted by Dodd’s 1961 Detroit lecture. We must, however, reconsider some underlying presumptions that have grown up around the facts. The best way to do this is by informing ourselves of the facts and understanding the larger historical picture while acknowledging that there is much yet to be discovered.

Until more is known about Dodd and she is better understood, interested persons would be wise to exercise good judgment.

More information

Kevin Symonds discusses this and related conspiracy theories in two podcast interviews with Dr Joseph Shaw, part of the Latin Mass Society's 'Iota Unum' podcasts, which are available on Spotify and other podcast platforms.

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COMMENT

Where have our vocations gone?

By Fr Christopher Basden

T

he projected closure of St John’s Seminary, Wonersh, is heart breaking for so many priests in the south of England.

Wonersh is our Alma Mater. Seminaries are our future. This news has come in the wake of the projected demise of Downside Abbey where my uncle was Ordained. The Monasteries are our hidden strength! How much more decline must we face?

In my own lifetime I have seen the closure of every minor Seminary in these Isles. In Scotland there are no Seminaries left and in Ireland only one (their Roman Colleges continue).

For the English we have seen the closure of Lisbon, Upholland, Ushaw and now Wonersh. They are killing off the fruitfulness of a Church we have known and loved!

Of course, I realise there are many external factors including the huge demographic, cultural and sexual revolutions we have undergone. However, it is undeniable that there has also been a revolution within the Church (catechetical, liturgical, and theological) that has facilitated a doctrinal relativism which has considerably weakened the Church’s confidence. Moral relativism also has entered in and has infiltrated with sexual impropriety into the highest echelons of the Clergy, thus disgracing us before the whole world.

Although I am sad and pessimistic about today’s ecclesial scene I am not without hope. The purpose of this article is to show how many British young men and women look beyond these shores for vocation, not unlike in penal days. Below is a list of some of the main Seminaries and religious congregations which have in 2020 British men and women within.

Name Priestly Fraternity of St Peter* Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest* Institute of The Good Shepherd* Society of St Pius X w/asc.

Sisters* Franciscans of The Immaculate & Marians* Institute of The Incarnate Word Franciscans of The Renewal Community of St John Abbey of Le Barroux* Abbey of Heligenkreuz Abbey of Gower Missouri * Community of St Martin

Ordained

Professed ‘Nuns’ Seminarians/Juniors

12

0

6

2

3

8 in Seminary + 5 in prep

0

0

2

11

10 & 1 Brother

3

2

2 Nuns & 2 Brothers

0

2 3 5 1 1 0 1

3 2 Nuns & 3 Brothers 1 0 – 2 –

2 0 0 0 – 0 –

‘Dominican’ Friars of Cheméré*

1

–

Sisters of Life, New York City

0

0

– 1

Carmels Abroad*

0

2?

?

Society of Our Lady of The 2 2 & 1 Brother 0 Trinity EWTN 0 1 0 Brignolles OSB Priory* – – 1 *The Institutes which use the so called ‘Extraordinary Form’ is used by almost 80% of the people above.

More than 100 British men and women are listed above.

Why have this many young British men and women sacrificed not only family but homeland, culture and even language often for ever? There are several factors:

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1. The identifying character of the Cassock/Religious Habit.

This ancient tradition goes back centuries and is also evident in all the Churches of The East. The Habit does not make the Monk, but it certainly identifies and helps the Monk! How can one deny this dimension which helps unite Brownies and Cubs all the way up to the armed forces who parade each November before the Cenotaph?

2. A challenge involving a certain amount of rigour without being inhumane.

3.

A conviction that salvation is not assured. The missionary endeavour of the Church has been compromised by the newer current of universalism and pseudo ecumenism. This has damaged the incentive to evangelise and live the radicality of the Gospel.

4. An unashamed eagerness to witness to the power of Chastity in this sullied and destructive era. An eschewing of ‘gender fluidity’; acknowledging the complementarity of male and female as created by God. 5. The Perennial Philosophy. In the recent Code of Canon Law 252 it states: ‘Students are to learn to penetrate more intimately the Mysteries of Salvation especially with St Thomas as a teacher.’ and in Canon 251: ‘Philosophical Instruction must be grounded in the perennial valid philosophical heritage.’

6. An unashamed conviction in the belief of the supernatural.

As St Paul says, “If our hope in Christ is for this life only, we are the most miserable of men.”

7. The Traditional Liturgy. I know this is something my ageing contemporaries cannot bear to hear, but the Immemorial Mass of the Roman Rite which goes back to St Gregory The Great has an explicit doctrinal and eucharistic clarity and content.

Furthermore, it is characterised by a profound abasement of the human before the majesty of God accompanied by a beauty and other worldly silence. The sublime vehicle of Gregorian Chant (which Vatican II said should have pride of place) is unsurpassed by any other artistic expression in the history of Christianity. The traditional liturgy does not straitjacket participation but allows for a more inclusive liberty to connect in different individual ways. For centuries, this Mass captivated and inspired millions inside and outside the Church and it still does.

For me, the simple fact is, tradition works! Who on earth likes tea, coffee, wine or beer diluted? Similarly, if our Catholic heritage is diluted the whole impetus to live it is weakened. The recently canonised John Henry Cardinal Newman campaigned throughout his life against ‘That one great mischief – liberalism in religion’.

While at St Bede’s Clapham Park in London (1994-2018) I was amazed at how many young people attended our Traditional Rite as a springboard for discerning vocation. Many of course tried and did not persevere but in the Tradition they found the certainty, the beauty, and the incentive to at least have a go. We had youth who visited Papa Stronsay in Scotland, Silverstream near Dublin, and Norcia in Italy, to name three Traditional Monasteries which in a very short time have developed viable communities.

Exhausted Bishops spend a lot of energy trying to fill empty parishes and convents with priests and religious from other continents and cultures which have enriched our Catholicity.

However, hopefully they are now beginning to see that young British men and women are still also called to Ordination and Profession and would like to help this country realise the Resurrection!

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CROSSWORD Clues Across 1 Scheming advisor to Henry VIII in his split from Rome (7) 5 Usual reference to St Thomas Aquinas’s great work (5) 8 Land where Cain exiled after first fratricide (3) 9 Diocese where the ICKSP have two churches, an Academy and a Convent (9) 10 Patron Saint of peace (5) 11 Person who could read and write employed to record messages and documents (9) 14 Celebrated on 26, 28, & 29 May (5,4) 18 Italian city, archbishopric and Maria Maggiore cathedral from 13th c. (5) 21 Giovanni, baroque composer known particularly for his Stabat Mater (9) 22 Means of water transport propulsion (3) 23 St Catherine of, Doctor of the Church and papal advisor (5) 24 Famous oratorio by Handel with text from the OT and NT (7)

Alan Frost: April 2021

ANSWERS TO SPRING 2021 CROSSWORD

Across: 1 Seville 5 David 8 Nos 9 Gladiator 10 Trout 11 Isidore Of 14 Yesterday 18 Marat 21 Sylvester 22 Qui 23 Erase 24 San Jose Down: 1 Sanctity 2 Vision 3 Legatine 4 Exaudi 5 Dais 6 Votive 7 Dark 12 Oxymoron 13 Fast Time 15 Stella 16 Dante’s 17 Pro Quo 19 Iste 20 Bede

Clues Down 1 Song giving name to Book of the OT (8) 2 Apostle whose crucifixion recalled on Scotland’s flag (6) 3 Chocolate sweet, nothing to do with native of a Catholic island! (8) 4 Campanologist who may be fraudulent! (6) 5 Playwright who coined the term ‘Chesterbelloc’ (4) 6 Motherly figure, former title of senior nurse (6) 7 City recaptured by Crusaders in 1191 but lost a century later (4) 12 Responsible for sudden deaths of some of the earliest Christians (8) 13 Preparatory work and reading for a publication (8) 15 James, writer who gave us Peter Pan and Neverland (6) 16 Saint, Norman period intellectual Archbishop of Canterbury (6) 17 Famous Renaissance Garden near Rome, created on estate of Cardinal d’Este (6) 19 ‘Et ---- nostra salve’, Salve Regina (4) 20 A little Greek letter (4)

Entries for the summer 2021 competition should be sent to the Latin Mass Society, 11-13 Macklin Street, London WC2B 5NH or scanned and emailed to info@lms.org.uk, to arrive before Friday 11th June 2021.

The winner of the spring 2021 competition is Mr Down of Salford, who wins a copy of Praying the Crucifix by Julien Chilcott-Monk.

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS Guild of St Clare: Bobbin Lace for Beginners. Ongoing course, fortnightly on Thursday evenings.

To recommence when Coronavirus restrictions are lifted. Email for further information: lucyashaw@ gmail.com Guild of St Clare: Autumn 2021 Sewing Retreat at Douai Abbey, 1214 November, with Fr Tim Finigan.

Douai Abbey, Upper Woolhampton, Reading, RG7 5TQ. Now fully booked: still possible to join the waiting list through the LMS website.

Guild of St Clare: Spring 2022 Sewing Retreat at Douai Abbey, 4-6 February 2022, with Fr Stephen Morrison OPra e m . D ou a i A bbey, Upper Woolhampton, Reading, RG7 5TQ. Booking open on the LMS website.

St Catherine’s Trust Summer School for children: Sunday 1 to Saturday 7 August, at St Cassian’s Centre, Wallingtons Road, Kintbury, Berkshire RG17 9SP. Book through www.stcatherinestrust.org

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LMS Latin & New Testament Greek Residential Course: 16-21 August (Mon to Sat). Latin for beginners and intermediate students; Greek for students with some basic knowledge.

Reduced rates for clergy, religious, and seminarians for the Latin course.

With Fr John Hunwicke, Fr Richard Bailey, and Matthew Spencer. Savio House, Ingersley Rd, Bollington, Macclesfield SK10 5RW. More details and booking through the LMS website.

Online Christian Latin and New Testament Greek Courses with Matthew Spencer. For ongoing courses, email Matthew Spencer matthewjaspencer@yahoo.com S t Ta r c i s i u s S e r ve r Tra i n i n g Days / Guild of St Clare Vestment Mending Days: 24 July in St Mary Moorfields, London; 25 September in St James' Spanish Place, London; 20 November in St James' Spanish Place, London. Please book on the LMS website for the Server Training; email lucyashaw@gmail.com for the Vestment Mending. In both cases all levels of skill are welcome!

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If you have any books you would like to donate, please contact the LMS Office info@lms.org.uk

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