This weekend is the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost and we have two Masses:
11.00 a.m. Sacred Heart chapel, Broughton Hall, Skipton
1.00 p.m. St. Joseph's, Pakington Street, Bradford
Confessions at call.
Agnes Rutherford
It was with great sadness that I recently reported the recent death of Mrs. Agnes Rutherford who was for many years the Leeds Diocese Representative of the Latin Mass Society and Secretary to the Diocesan Reps for the LMS.
Her passing was serene and she had received the last Sacraments shortly before death. Please remember her soul in your prayers and please remember her husband and two daughters whom she leaves.
Agnes was the Rep for Leeds when things were very much more difficult with regard to universal provision of the old Mass and only a few weeks ago she told me that at one time the only priest who publicly dared to offer the Mass was Fr. Harry Tattan at St. Urban's, followed by Monsignor Diarmuid Scannell at Burley in Wharfedale. Her own brother Mgr. Hugh Boyle of Glasgow regularly offered Mass at the Shambles, York and St. John the Baptist, Normanton when he was on holiday in the summer months.
I shall personally always remember Agnes' kindness and wise and measured counsel when I was the LMS Rep following her successor Gerry Lyons.
She had only recently passed on some of her papers to me and the amount of work these represent to keep the Mass on the altars of our churches was breath-taking and in itself worthy of Almighty God's reward.
Even a cursory perusal of these papers tells the story of how the Mass was kept alive here and the kindness of Bishop Wheeler is eminently clear from her first written exchange with him.
Other letters are less encouraging and she was always keen to point out how much progress had been made from the days of when many Catholics were traumatised at the recent changes and who seemed thereafter to rely solely on damnatory private revelation and unpleasantness to further the cause. Moreover she was clearly aware of how such behaviour was a thermometer of those distant times.
She had an encyclopaedic recollection of events local, national and international and as a graduate of Classics and Modern Languages she was always able to help me with translations from and into Latin at the drop of a hat!
The sung Mass of Requiem will take place at the church of Ss. Peter and Paul, Yeadon on October 2nd at 12.30 p.m. followed by interment at Guiseley Cemetery.
May she rest in peace - a good and faithful servant.
(I shall repost this section nearer the funeral.)
