Updated list of LMS Pilgrimages

I blogged on this in March, but now we have entered the pilgrimage season more events have been confirmed.

July
Wed 1 Pilgrimage to Caldey Island
St Illtyd’s Church, Caldey Abbey, Caldey Island. Sung Mass 11.30am
Details: Steffano Mazzeo on 01597 840634

Sun 12 National Pilgrimage to Holywell
St Winefride’s, Well Street, Holywell. Mass at 2.30pm followed by Procession to
St Winefride’s Well Devotions and Veneration of the relic and Benediction
Details: David Lloyd on 01352 712327

Sun 19 Pilgrimage in honour of SS John Lloyd & Philip Evans
St Peter’s, St Peter St, Roath, Cardiff . Sung Mass and Procession 3.00pm
Details: Kingsley Lewis on 029 2025 1685


August
Sat 15 Welsh National Pilgrimage to Shrine of Our Lady of the Taper,
Our Lady of the Taper, North Road, Cardigan.
Mass at 12noon followed by Procession, Holy Hour and Benediction
Details: Steffano Mazzeo on 01597 840634


September
Sat 5 Pilgrimage to Brinkburn Priory
Brinkburn Priory, Nr Rothbury, Northumberland. Mass 12 noon
Details: Richard Rainbow on 0191 252 9133

Sat 5 Pilgrimage to Glastonbury
Church of Our Lady, Magdalene St. Glastonbury. Mass at 12 noon
Benediction 2.15pm followed by Rosary Procession
Details: Nigel Taylor on 0117966 9976

Sat 12 National Pilgrimage to Walsingham
Rosary Procession from Friday Market 2.00pm Sung Mass 3.30pm
Details: LMS office on 020 7404 7284

Sat 26 Southwark Diocese Pilgrimage to Aylesford
Shrine of Our Lady & St Simon Stock The Friary Aylesford Kent
Mass at 1.00pm Talk at 3.00pm followed by Rosary and Benediction.
Details: Piers Hugill on 020 7064 1910


October
Sat 17 St Richard Gwyn Pilgrimage Wrexham (details to be advised)
Sat 24 Oxford Martyrs Pilgrimage tbc

Lanherne and Caldey Island

I've recently been sent photograps of the LMS Pilgrimage to Caldey Island, and the refurbished chapel of the new community at Lanherne in Cornwall, of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate.

For more on the convent, see this article from Mass of Ages. This reletively new order have taken over a former Carmelite convent in Cornwall. They are fully committed to the Traditional Missal and Office, and have not put the altar of their chapel back against the east wall. Thanks to Martin Gardner who took this photograph and others which can be seen here.

In the meantime, the Latin Mass Society Pilgrimage to another very interesting monastic centre, Caldey Abbey on Caldey Island, has taken place.



This was the first Traditional Mass to be celebrated on Caldey Island in c.40 years. The Feast was the Most Precious Blood and the celebrant was Fr Jason Jones of Our Lady of the Taper, Cardigan.

Thanks to Steffano Mazzeo, the LMS local Representative who organised the event.

Solemn Mass at SS Gregory & Augustine

Yesterday there was celebrated what I believe to have been the first Traditional Solemn Mass celebrated on a Sunday in an Oxford church. This is a tremendous breakthrough for the integregration of the usus antiquior into parish life in Oxford.

The Church was SS Gregory and Augustine, and the occasion was the visit of a touring Polish choir, the Pueri Cantores Plocenses. Fr John Saward, Priest in Charge, was the celebrant; Mr ; the Subdeacon was a visiting Benedictine monk, Dom Bede Price, of the Abbey of St Louis, Missouri.

The Pueri Cantores numbered more than 40, and took up much of one side of the nave. They were supplemented by a small Gregorian Schola for the propers. The choir sant Byrd's Mass for Four Voices quite beutifully.

The church was packed, with many people joining the schola in the choir loft and others standing at the back.

Let us hope this is but the first of many Sung and Solemn Masses in Oxford on Sundays!

I'm sorry that technical mishaps left me only rather inferior photographs.

Fr William Barker's first Mass

After the ordinations on the Saturday, the British contingent attended Fr Barker's first Mass on the Sunday morning. This was in an exquisit Baroque church a couple of miles from Wigratzbad itself. The full set of photographs can be seen here.


Note the angels painted on the inside of the tabernacle doors.

Note the houselling cloth on the altar rails. They also used a houseling cloth at the ordination Mass, when the ordinands were given communion not at the communion rails but in front of the altar. The cloth was stretched between two acolytes and formed a sort of temporary railing.

I was in the choir loft. The church was packed.

Wigratzbad - pictures

Coming back to the UK from Wigratzbad I immediately went on holiday, so these pictures have been delayed. But here they are at last. The full set is here.

Before the ordinations, Fr Simon Leworthy FSSP running to the church in the pouring rain. It rained one and off all day.

The ordinands process in.

The sacred ministers reach the altar.

The ordinands lying before the altar.

Bishop Shneider lays on his hands.

So do the other 65 priests present.

The ordinands are given their chasubles, pinned up at the back.

Their hands are annointed, and bound together.

Mass resumes, with the ordinands assisting.

Bishop Shneider gives the ordinands the kiss of peace.

They prepare to process out of the church.

Bishop Shneider.

During the lunch afterwards, Fr William Barker stands between me (right), Leo Darroch, Presidenet of Una Voce International (left), and to the right of Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP, who is based with Fr Leworthy in Reading.

Wigratzbad ordinations

(I haven't yet processed my own pictures but here are some from the NLM. )

This Summer has sent the priestly ordination of two men from England and Wales in the Fraternity of St Peter: Fr Matthew Goddard, at the FSSP seminary in Denton, Nebraska (USA), and Fr William Barker, at the seminary at Wigratzbad in Bavaria. With a group of ten lay people, who included Leo Darroch, President of the Una Voce International, I traveled to see the ordinations at Wigratzbad, which took place on 27th June.

Fr Barker was ordained, together with four French and German seminarians, in the large modern church which houses a shrine of Our Lady next to the Seminary. The church was packed to the doors, with about 1,000 people; I was told that it was a record for the number of visitors. We managed to squeeze ourselves into different parts of the church among the friends and relations of the ordinands, who included many young people and children. The procession into the church was truly impressive, with 65 priests, including Fraternity priests from all over the world, and priests of other traditional orders, and ranks and ranks of seminarians.
The ordination was celebrated by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, an auxiliary bishop in Kazakhstan (of German extraction) who has recently become well known for his book ‘Dominus est’ (Amazon), arguing for the reception of communion kneeling and on the tongue. This was the first traditional ordination I have attended, and I was very struck by the great beauty and solemnity of the ceremonies. It was a deeply moving and joyful occasion, remarkable for the number of priests present who all laid their hands, in turn, on the ordinands. The Solemn Mass was accompanied by Gregorian Chant sung with great dignity by the seminarians.
(In this picture: Fr Barker is second from the right, with Fr Conrad Loewnstein second from the left.)

The newly ordained priests were detained by crowds of people seeking their blessing; I was privileged to be blessed by Fr Barker. Leo Darroch and I were invited to the lunch put on for the clergy and the ordinands’ families by the Fraternity in the seminary, where I was able to chat with Fr Conrad Loewenstein FSSP, who is based in Venice, and is one of the sons of our Honorary President, Prince Rupert Loewenstein. The following day, together with Fr Armand de Malleray and Fr Simon Leworthy, the FSSP priests who serve the traditional community in Reading, we attended Fr Barker’s first Mass in an exquisite Baroque parish church a short distance from Wigratzbad.

Nothing more eloquently expresses the progress of the restoration of the Church’s traditions than these ordinations, both for the world in general and for this country in particular. The Fraternity of St Peter and the Institute of Christ the King have not found England and Wales a barren mission field in terms of vocations, and many more such ordinations can be expected in the coming years. In the meantime the Latin Mass Society will continue to help these young men financially; anyone wishing to contribute to this can make a donation to the Latin Mass Society specifically for that purpose.

I would like to thank Mr Mark Miles for his highly efficient organization of the trip, and to the FSSP for its kind hospitality.

CMAA event in America

Isn't this brilliant? This is pretty well exactly what I'd like to do here in the UK.

In fact I've already made a small start, with the St Catherine's Trust Chant course. What the video shows is the potential.

What is Traditionalism?

Having argued that we may legitimately use the term 'Traditionalism' and its cognates (Traditionalist etc.) I should say what I think it means.

The best definition I've heard is this (from Fr James McLucas, formerly editor of the The Latin Mass Magazine): from memory,

A Traditionalist is a Catholic who wishes to live in organic continuity with previous generations of Catholics.

Given the huge changes in the Church over the last half century such a desire, if it is serious, implies a serious and sustained effort. In the past much less effort, if any, was required of ordinary Catholics to live in organic continuity with previous generations of Catholics. And everyone could be assumed to want to live like that.

The most obvious application of this desire is in the liturgy. The Novus Ordo Missae promulgated in 1969 is in organic continuity with previous editions, and the broad liturgical tradition, only in a sense which is thinner, more attenuated, than the sense in which the Missal of 1962, or the Missal of Trent, or any other pre-62 edition, is in organic continuity with its predecessors. I think I can say that without fear of contradiction. The Holy Father has made this point more forcefully but I will leave it at that. Saying just this explains why Traditionalists are 'attached to the previous liturgical tradition', as it is sometimes expressed (in the Motu Proprio, for example).

The Traditionalist attitude towards continuity with the past has other implications. Rubricarius says we have something in common with the liberals. True: like them we reject Ultramontanism, the position which emphasises Papal authority (or more broadly the authority of the Holy See) over other sources of authority and information, such as Scripture, Tradition, and Councils.

As I see it Liberalism replaces Ultramontanism with an inconsistent view of what we should take most seriously as Catholics. It places Vatican II at the heart of things; yet VII only has authority as a General Council, so it is inconsistent to emphasise VII at the expense of other Geneal Councils. Using (one interpretation of) VII to reject VI and Trent, for example, just doesn't make sense.

Liberals and Conservatives have something in common, it seems to me: a disinclination to make distinctions between different levels of authority in post-conciliar Church statements. Liberals reject them all (as they see fit) without distinctioin, and Conservatives regard them all as equally binding.

This is broad-brush stuff. But I've noticed Conservatives get very impatient with Trads when we point out, for example, that various positions are merely the private opinions of recent Popes, or have not been properly promulgated, or only come from a dicastery etc.. Of course this impatience follows from Ultramontanism.

Like many trads I used to be a Conservative, so when I talk about or criticise Conservativism I am in part talking about my own former self. I can see now that I used to want to live in organic continuity with previous generations of Catholics, but within the limts set by Ultramontanism. So, because this or that had been approved (note: approved, not declared infallible) by recent Popes, I thought I ought to go along with it. When I finally saw the error of Ultramontanism, my traditionalist instinct was able to develop more fully.

The error of Ultramontanism is easy to see, with hindsight, because it is rejected not only by Liberals and Trads but also by the Pope and the Papal Magisterium. In the chaotic decades which have followed the Council, Papal teaching has often been a lifeline for Catholics who wanted to see traditional teachings reiterated; it is natural that Conservatives have clung on to it. It is understandable, but obviously wrong, to take this to an extreme and start saying that whatever the Pope, or some Vatican department, makes a friendly off-the-cuff remark about must be imposed on everyone by next Tuesday, and the Popes themselves would regard this attitude as absurd.

Hence we find a frequent contrast between what Popes have said about their own positions, and how Conservatives have applied those positions. So Paul VI said that Natural Family Planning can be legitimate in certain circumstances. And you get Catholics who regard themselves as Conservative saying that all Catholics preparing for marriage should be drilled in it. John-Paul II said that the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary might be found helpful, and Conservative presses suddenly pulp all their books on the Rosary so they could add the new mysteries, and conservative parishes insist on having them. Benedict XVI carefully explains that his books are not papal teaching, but his opinions as a private doctor, but Conservatives promote them without such a warning and they are printed wrapped in the papal colours.

I'm not saying these applications are wrong. But they illustrate the attempts of Conservatives to be - as the phrase has it - more Catholic than the Pope. If you listen to the Popes you get a complex and nuanced view of Papal authority; if you listen to Conservatives, too often you do not.