I have been taken to task by several good people for the paucity of posts on this blog over the last few months since the rescript issued by Cardinal Roche. The latest restrictions on the public celebration of Mass according to the books of 1962 have pained me more than I could begin to describe. My life is impoverished without regular access to the Mass in the old Rite.
There is only so much I can do to "big up" one Sunday Mass per week.
I remain very grateful for the provision at St. Patrick's, Bradford, each Sunday at 1.00 p.m. and on Holydays of Obligation at 5.00 p.m. and for the Friars' continued support and hospitality.
The following Sunday (July 2nd) marks the Ruby Jubilee of Fr. Driver who will also be the celebrant of the Mass at St. Patrick's on that day, exactly forty years after Bishop Wheeler elevated him to the priestly life. He will wear the vestments he was ordained in and we shall have some of the same hymns he had on his ordination day.
I hope those who have benefited from Fr. Kevin's ministry will join us on that day of jubilation as we say Ad multos annos to him in gratitude for all he does for us.
Thank you also to Mr. George Watson who has played the organ for us regularly on the third Sunday of the month at St Patrick's and before that at St. Joseph's who is officially bowing out and retiring at the grand age of 82 on that day.
Thank you Fr. Driver and thank you George.
This Thursday is marked as the Feat of Corpus Christi in the Roman Missal but in England and Wales will be celebrated on Sunday as an external solemnity, which means there will be no Mass on Thursday at St. Patrick's.
Our Mass on Sunday at St. Patrick's will be a missa cantata to celebrate this wonderful feast and will be different in two ways to our regular sung Mass. Firstly it will serve as a First Holy Communion Mass for one of our younger people and secondly there will be a procession of the Blessed Sacrament following the Mass. Please do consider lending your support to attend this Mass and procession. Last year's procession was very moving.
I am also very pleased to report that David Adolph is now out of hospital and is now being well looked after in a local nursing home. He is in much higher spirits than he was in hospital. Thank you for your prayers.
May is the month we set aside to honour our Blessed Lady. This Sunday's Mass at St. Patrick's (1.00 p.m.) is our regular Missa Cantata and will be concluded with the Litany of Our Lady of Loreto.
Thursday is the feast of the Ascension of our Lord into glory and there will be Mass at St. Patrick's at 5.00 p.m.
Friday is the Requiem Mass of Michael Rutherford at 12.30 p.m. at Ss Peter & Paul's, Yeadon.
Please continue to remember in your prayers David Adolph who is still in hospital. He has asked me to thank everyone who has remembered him in their prayers.
Michael Rutherford's Requiem Mass details have now been finalised. It will take place at 12.30 p.m. on Friday 19th. May at the church of Saints Peter & Paul, Yeadon, Leeds, LS19 7HW followed by interment at Guiseley cemetery.
Many thanks to those who attended this year's Sacred Triduum at St Patrick's. Similarly many thanks to Fr. Frantisek who offered the Liturgies so beautifully and to Fr. Christopher for permitting the Triduum to take place at St. Patrick's this year.
Thank you to those who have asked about, prayed for and visited David Adolph who remains in hospital. He is still very sick but it was touching to be able to converse with him yesterday after seeing him so desperately ill during the week.
I doubt that few people who attend the old Mass these days will remember Michael Rutherford who died during the night between Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Michael had been the Deputy Head at St. Michael's College in Leeds and taught the likes of Canon Timothy Wiley. and other priests of the diocese. Michael's wife, Agnes, was for many years the Representative for the Latin Mass Society in this diocese and set the tone of non-confrontation with the successors of Bishop Wheeler.
Michael who was an enormous rugby union player and fan had a very dry sense of humour and I always appreciated his candour.
As he now joins Agnes I hope and pray that he will rest in peace and rise in the glory of Almighty God. Requiescat in pace. Please remember Michael and his daughters Margaret and Alison and their families in your prayers.
Michael told me that he wished for the old Mass for his funeral and the hymn he wished to be sung at the end. I shall endeavour to carry out his wishes.
This year's Triduum will take place at St. Patrick's Church, Westgate, Bradford BD1 2RU
TIMES:
Maundy Thursday. Mass of the Lord's Supper, 7.00 p.m.
Good Friday. The Passion, 3.00 p.m.
Holy Saturday. The Easter Vigil, 7.00 p.m.
Easter Sunday. 1.00 p.m.
I have copied and pasted the following article (in italics) from The Pillar. Cardinal Roche to German bishops: ‘Nein’ to regular lay baptisms and preaching at Mass (pillarcatholic.com)
Whilst I would obviously welcome the Cardinal's intervention, wasn't this same man who was announcing his enormous statement to the BBC less than two weeks ago that the theology of the Church has changed and that a distant priest no longer represents all people because now it is not only the priest who celebrates the liturgy but all those who are baptised with him.
Have I possibly missed something along the way? Has it not really changed or only the bits which suit a flawed and merciless agenda against the old Mass. Surely in the spirit of the Council and the now unspecified changed theology, the Church in Germany (and the Low Countries), which he admits are in decline, is taking on board what the Cardinal, presumably with the ailing Pontiff's approval, has said. I recently entered into correspondence with Frau Monika Rheinschmitt, the Treasurer of Una Voce who told me that in a country so liberal as Germany only 10% of traditional Masses have been lost since Traditiones Custodes. It appears that the implementation of the February rescript and Traditiones Custodes are the least of the Cardinal's problems in Germany. More confusion. Are we who are regarded as needing rehabilitation to be reassured by the Cardinal's words that the Vatican remains open to dialogue?
The prefect for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship has objected to plans for regular lay baptisms and lay preaching at Masses endorsed by Germany’s controversial “synodal way.”
Cardinal Arthur Roche made his objections known in a letter to German bishops’ conference chairman Bishop Georg Bätzing, the official news website of the Catholic Church in Germany reported March 30.
Katholisch.de said that it had seen the letter, which had not been published by the Vatican or the German bishops’ conference at press time.
The synodal way — a three-year initiative bringing together German bishops and select lay people to discuss changes to Church teaching and practice — formally ended March 11 after approving a document entitled “Proclamation of the Gospel by lay people in word and sacrament.”
The text called on the German bishops’ conference to develop regulations “for the qualification and commissioning of lay men and women to lead the celebration of baptism.”
It also asked German bishops to “draw up a particular norm and obtain permission for this from the Holy See, according to which the homily can also be taken over in Eucharistic celebrations on Sundays and feast days by theologically and spiritually qualified faithful commissioned by the bishop.”
According to katholisch.de, Cardinal Roche referred in his letter to canon law, which says that bishops, priests, or deacons are the “ordinary ministers” of baptism, and that exceptions can only be made when they are “absent or impeded,” or “in a case of necessity.”
The prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments reportedly said that the exceptions applied when an ordinary minister could not be found within a month.
He said that such conditions “do not seem to exist in any diocese in the area of the German bishops’ conference, based on the data from the papal yearbook on the clergy available.”
He added that “in any case, there were still enough ordained ministers to cope with the annual number of baptisms in the German dioceses, which is in decline.”
Regarding lay preaching, the cardinal also referred to canon law, which says that “lay persons can be permitted to preach in a church or oratory, if necessity requires it in certain circumstances or it seems advantageous in particular cases,” but the homily “is reserved to a priest or deacon.”
“This is not an exclusion of the laity,” Cardinal Roche wrote, “nor is it, of course, a denial of the right and duty of every baptized person, male or female, to proclaim the Gospel, but rather a confirmation of the specificity of this form of proclamation, which is the homily.”
He suggested that “misunderstandings about the figure and identity of the priest” could “arise in the consciousness of the Christian community” if lay people preached at Mass.
He stressed that this did not mean that there were inequalities among baptized Catholics, but rather “that there are discernments made by the Spirit, which produces different charisms that are different and complementary.”
“Word and sacrament are inseparable realities, and inasmuch as they are not merely formal expressions of the exercise of sacra potestas [sacred power], they are neither separable nor can they be separable.”
The cardinal highlighted Pope Francis’ opening in 2021 of the ministries of lector and acolyte to women.
“This openness offers lay people the opportunity to engage in meaningful liturgical ministry in the exercise of the ministry of lector and acolyte,” he wrote, expressing interest in “how this possibility was received in the dioceses in Germany.”
Both lay homilies and baptisms are already an established practice in some German dioceses. Katholisch.de noted that a 1999 document set out conditions for lay preaching at Masses in the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. Last October, the diocese’s current Bishop Gebhard Fürst issued a decree permitting lay theologians to preside at baptisms.
Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen formally commissioned lay people to administer baptisms in March 2022.
Cardinal Roche’s letter is the latest in a long line of Vatican interventions concerning the synodal way.
It comes little more than two weeks after Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin indicated that the Vatican opposed a synodal way resolution supporting blessings for same-sex unions in churches.
He told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Rome March 13 that “the Holy See has already expressed itself very clearly with the document of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.” He was referring to the 2021 Vatican declaration that “the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex.”
Cardinal Roche reportedly ended his letter to Bishop Bätzing by underlining that the Vatican remained open to dialogue.
A spokesman for Germany’s bishops’ conference told katholisch.de: “We realize that the dicastery’s letter describes the current situation on the issues discussed. At the end, there is an invitation to further dialogue, which we are happy to accept. It’s good that we’re staying in touch with Rome in this way.”
A spokeswoman for the powerful lay Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) told the website that the Vatican letter was a welcome sign of Rome’s interest in the consequences of the synodal way in Germany.
“Talks in Rome are overdue and are in the heartfelt interest of Catholic civil society in this country,” said Britta Baas.
She added: “In just a few years, no one will be able to seriously oppose lay sermons and baptisms by lay people if the Church still wants to have meaning for the local people. We already have a glaring shortage of priests.”
I celebrated my first Mass on November 26, 1972. I did it using the rite then in force, the one created by Paul VI, whose author was the Freemason Annibale Bugnini. The Mass was In Spanish, of course, though the secret prayers of the celebrant survived in Latin.
Text copied from Gateshead Revisited blog:
News from Rome! http://blog.messainlatino.it/2023/03/breakingnews-la-liturgia-tradizionale.html
PRESS RELEASE Starting this morning, and lasting for 15 days, several dozen billboards dedicated to the traditional liturgy will be posted near and around the Vatican. An organizing committee, whose members are participating in a personal capacity and who come from different Catholic entities (such as the blogs, Messainlatino and Campari & de Maistre, and the associations, National Committee on Summorum Pontificum and the St Michael the Archangel Association), wished to make public their profound attachment to the traditional Mass at a time when its extinction seems to be planned. They do so out of love for the Pope, so that he might be paternally opened to understanding those liturgical peripheries that no longer feel welcome in the Church, because they find in the traditional liturgy the full and complete expression of the entire Catholic Faith. “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden of even considered harmful” (Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops on the occasion of the publication of the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum). The growing hostility towards the traditional liturgy finds no justification on either a theological or pastoral level. The communities that celebrate the liturgy according to the 1962 Roman Missal are not rebels against the Church. On the contrary, blessed by steady growth in lay faithful and priestly vocations, they constitute an example of steadfast perseverance in Catholic faith and unity, in a world increasingly insensitive to the Gospel, and an ecclesial context increasingly yielding to disintegrating impulses. For this reason, the attitude of rejection with which their own pastors are forced to treat these communities today is not only reason for bitter sorrow, which these faithful strive to offer for the purification of the Church, but also constitutes a grave injustice. In the face of this injustice, charity itself demands that we not remain silent: for “indiscreet silence leaves in error those who might have been instructed” (Pope St Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, Book II, chapter 4). In the Church of our day, in which listening, welcoming, and inclusion inspire all pastoral action, and there is a desire to build ecclesial communion “with a synodal method,” this group of ordinary faithful, young families, and fervent priests has the confident hope that its voice will not be stifled but welcomed, listened to, and taken into due consideration. Those who go to the “Latin Mass” are not second-class believers, nor are they deviants to be re-educated or a burden to be gotten rid of. The Organizing Committee (Toni Brandi, Luigi Casalini, Federico Catani, Guillaume Luyt, Simone Ortolani, Marco Sgroi) prolibertatemissalis@gmail.com
I had been told beforehand that this diocese’s episcopal delegate for the traditional Mass, Fr. Michael
Hall, had been interviewed for March 19th.’s Sunday programme in a piece about
the Roche Rescript. (It is available here: Sunday - 19/03/2023 - BBC
Sounds at 5:10 into the programme). It was a short report and featured
Father Hall, a south of England You-Tuber, Austin Ivereigh and Cardinal Roche
himself.
The whole thing made for sad and
disturbing listening as Fr. Hall explained that he didn’t feel as if he could really
look to the Holy Father as his spiritual father because of things he had said
about traditional Catholics and that he felt as if Francis hates him and people
like him.
An internet search of remarks
made by the Pope about those attracted to the old Mass would certainly bear
this out. “Restorationism has come to gag the Council”; their problem is
“precisely their non-acceptance of the Council”; “Dogma and morality is always
in a path of development”; “You cannot do theology with a ‘no’ in front of it;
“Tradition is the living faith of the dead, for traditionalists it is the dead
faith of the living”; “'Self-absorbed neo-Promethean Pelagians”; “Traditionalists
safeguard the ashes of the past whilst ‘touting’ tradition as the guarantee of
the future”.
Thus, it seems we have been cast
as prostitutes looking for business.
Perhaps most tellingly on June 14th. 2022, the Jesuit publication America
reported, “Just last week, in a meeting with Sicilian clergy, Francis told the
priests that it wasn’t always appropriate to use “grandma’s lace” in their
vestments and to update their liturgical garb to be in touch with
current times and follow in
the spirit of Vatican II.”
These remarks were also echoed in the Sunday broadcast by Cardinal Roche who claimed that the theology of the Church has changed and that a distant priest no longer represents all people because now it is not only the priest who celebrates the liturgy but all those who are baptised with him.
The Cardinal
admitted that this was an enormous statement to make.
My understanding had been that
pastors were to ensure “the faithful were fully aware of what they were doing,
actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by it.” (Sacrosanctum Concillium.) In
anybody’s wildest imaginings this could not mean that they were to be eventually
regarded as concelebrants. Could it?
The enormity of the statement is
undeniable for nowhere in the documents of the Council have I ever seen or had
my attention drawn to such a statement. Is the Cardinal perhaps referring to
what Pope Francis above calls the spirit of the Council?
I am assuming that this “spirit”
permits the abomination of idol worship in the figure of the Pachamama?
Pachamama (Earth Mother) is a goddess revered by people of the Andes and is
also an Earth Mother in Inca mythology who is a fertility goddess who oversees
planting and harvesting and is able to cause earthquakes. As an ever-present
and independent “deity”, she apparently has the power to sustain life on earth.
The Holy Father with Pachamama in
the foreground in the Vatican gardens
Perhaps the spirit of the Council
is the permission for those living in irregular situations to avail themselves
of the reception of Holy Communion by way of a discursive footnote in the document
Amoris Laetitia. To me this makes a mockery of the heroic struggles made by people in irregular relationships both now and in the past to live up to the Teaching of the Church in regard to this matter.
I repeat, “The theology of the
Church has changed”, according to Cardinal Roche. Do we have evidence of this
statement yet?
Cardinal Hollerich SJ the Primate
of Luxembourg who is the Relator General of Pope Francis’ Synod stated with
regard to the Synod, “We must learn to cope with multiple expressions of faith.
Today one can no longer proscribe a single practice, nor can we as bishops.”
Spoken like a true liberal. I have been unable to ascertain the situation
facing the old Mass in Luxembourg.
This very much reminds me of
comments made to me by Bishop Terry Drainey a few years ago at the Oratory in
York. He said that there could be no problem if people genuinely worshipped God
by attending a Solemn High Mass or standing on a chair waving their arms in the
air. More likely to do the former myself, I couldn’t disagree with him. I know a lot of
good arm wavers and have known many Charismatics who were as devoted and
obedient to the traditional teaching of the Church as any traditionally
orientated Catholic I have known.
It has been pointed out countless
times by people far more intelligent than I am that the strength of the unity
of the Church is in its diversity and not in uniformity and rigidity. There are 24 Rites and Uses in the Church. Is
Cardinal Roche’s intention to kick these venerable Rites into line with his
vision of Nu-church with its new theology by picking them off one at a time
starting, say with the Ordinariate Use with the excuse that if they really want
to be Catholics they’ll have to start singing from the same hymn sheet?
It certainly looks as if what the
Pope and the Cardinal are saying is that the Traditional Mass, the
Extraordinary Form, is no longer compatible with the spirit of Vatican II.
In his slot on the Sunday
Programme Mr. Ivereigh said that it was very clear in the Pope’s letter to the
bishops that traditionalists represent a movement to undermine Vatican II. He
wishes not to suppress the old Mass but to regulate it by putting it back into
the hands of the bishops.
I wondered if this clip of Mr.
Ivereigh referred to Traditiones Custodes and not the Roche Rescript as the
rescript has done exactly the opposite to what the pope appeared to have
originally intended.
Cardinal Roche’s Rescript
snatches away the power of the bishops to “regulate” the celebration of Mass in
their respective dioceses according to the books of 1962. Cardinal Roche is as
keen to remind us of the Council as the Pope is to have us kowtow to its spirit
but the Council’s document Lumen Gentium (27) stopped the bishops from being
mere vicars or lackeys of the pope by stating, “bishops have the sacred right
and duty before the Lord…to moderate everything
pertaining to the ordering of worship.” To all intents and purposes Church
teaching from as late as the 1960s is now being sacrificed on the altar of the “hermeneutic
of discontinuity and rupture” in the mere name of the spirit of the
Council. Confusion reigns. Who is undermining the Council now? Goodbye to the
concept of collegiality.
Pope John XXIII who convoked the
Council said its primary purpose was that the sacred deposit of Christian
Doctrine be guarded and taught more effectively. At its close Pope Paul
VI said that John's great purpose had been achieved. There was apparently never
any intention of new theology.
In Traditiones Custodes
the Pope begins by stating, “Guardians of the Tradition, the bishops in
communion with the bishop of Rome constitute the visible principle and
foundation of the unity of their particular churches. Under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit through the proclamation of the Gospel and by means of the
celebration of the Eucharist they govern the particular churches entrusted to
them”.
He goes on to say that his
predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI granted and regulated the faculty to
use the Roman Missal edited by John XXIII in 1962 to facilitate the ecclesial
communion of those Catholics who feel attached to some earlier liturgical form.
In 2020 there was a consultation
of the bishops and apparently as a result of this “consultation” , the results of which, in our open Church, have never
been revealed, the pope imposed a list
of restrictions in Traditiones Custodes decreeing for example that there
should be no authorisation of establishing new groups and that no priest
ordained after the publication of that document should be allowed to offer the
traditional Mass without recourse to Rome for this permission. I wonder how
many priests have requested and been granted such permission.
Bishops as the guardians of tradition
were now free to dispense with permitting the celebration of Mass according to
the books of 1962 if they so wished. Some like Cardinal Cupich of Chicago and
others did use this document to axe Masses but by and large most bishops were
happy to allow the status quo to continue in their sees. Very strange if the bishop’s
consultation had hinted at widespread disobedience and sedition against the
Council. Liturgical peace was shattered in such places as old wounds were
reopened and now fester again.
Some bishops posed dubia and in
his responsa, Cardinal Roche added further restrictions saying for example that
celebrations of the 1962 Mass were not allowed to be advertised on parish
bulletins and newsletters.
Possibly in reaction to the fact
that the bishops had in effect generally ignored Traditiones Custodes it
came as no surprise when the Congregation for Divine Liturgy and Discipline of
the Sacraments published the shocking rescript in February of this year which
knuckled down on what had gone before it by further attempting to stamp out the
old Mass. Under canon 87 (i) a bishop, remember, a custodian of tradition whose
duty it is to moderate everything pertaining to the ordering of worship now had
the rug pulled from under his feet as this right in canon law was withdrawn Is the Code of
Canon Law so delicate that one Prefect can sweep it away so swiftly? The permissions
given by bishops in their own dioceses to their priests saying the old Mass in
their parish churches and chapels were nullified by the stroke of a pen. Bishops
were being expected to dust off their liturgical jackboots.
In one conversation I had with
Bishop Stock he told me that he knew well enough that there were no seditious
groups lurking in the wings to question and undermine the Council. Indeed, few
of the priests who offer the Mass in this diocese are even hardly old enough to
remember it and they all say the new Mass dutifully without murmuring or
rancour. Why should they? One Leeds parish priest told me that by celebrating
the old Mass privately it had enriched his experience of saying the new Mass
and deepened his understanding of it.
Perhaps Pope Benedict saw the
dangers of where the nebulous spirit of the Council was leading when as early
as 1990 he wrote, “The liturgical reform in its concrete realization has
distanced itself even more from its origin. The result has not been a
re-animation but devastation – they have produced a fabricated liturgy.” (Revue
Theologisches)
In 2000 in his Spirit of the
Liturgy, “Anyone who now advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy
or takes part in it is treated like a leper. All tolerance ends here. In doing
this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past. How can one
trust her at present if things are that way?
He had already decried this
attitude in 1997 in his Salt of the Earth as being “downright indecent”.
Ratzinger’s predecessor Pope John
Paul II wrote in 1988, “The souls of those who feel bound to the Latin
liturgical tradition must be respected everywhere through a broad and generous
application of the directives already issued by the Holy See for the use of the
Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962.”
The week before on the Sunday
programme Cardinal Roche had spoken about the role of priests who the pope had
said needed to have the smell of the sheep. It would now appear that this
doesn’t apply if those souls smell of the old Mass or grandma’s lace. The
journalist at the BBC made reference to women attendees at the old Mass wearing
mantillas.
Instead, the spirit of Vatican II
has now opened up another can of worms with the ongoing synodal process. The
German Church has voted to adopt “implementation texts” related to same-sex
blessings, lay preaching during Mass and other controversial issues. These two former
things are explicitly forbidden at the moment, but I haven’t heard much, if any
condemnation from Rome since the majority of German bishops voted for these
things. I suppose now in Germany if I were a gay Catholic who wanted my civil
partnership blessing and to celebrate it with a traditional Mass I would get
the blessing but not the Mass. It beggars belief.
Who knows where the synodal path
will lead? It seems that the new “theology” will manifest itself in time but I
do know that Christ never told Peter that he was the rock on which He would
build his synodal cafeteria Church. It very much looks as if this confusing
papacy of mercy and decentralisation is as totally merciless and centralising
as one could imagine for a persecuted minority of faithful souls. Pastoral
sensitivity is really a thing of the past for some but there is always the
danger that this marginalisation and persecution of some of these people of God
will backfire and lead to increased devotion to the Mass which nourished so
many Catholics in times of persecution over the centuries. Nobody has succeeded
in stamping it out yet. Perhaps Vatican III is in the not too distant future.
Indeed, what greater comfort
could there be when in Psalm 42 at the start of most Masses the priest says,
“Do me justice, O God, and fight my fight against a faithless people; from the
deceitful and impious man rescue me”. Never has this psalm’s verse been so
resonant.
Cardinal McElroy has called for radical inclusion of marginalised groups in a very different context and certainly not our context. I feel as if I am part of a such a group these days and I want, like Fr. Hall to feel included in the Church I love.
My fear is that the beatings will
continue until morale improves.
I have recently made contact with a gentleman who lives near
Bradford who has started attending our Sunday Masses at St. Patrick’s.
He is a family man called Aidan Hargitt and he holds an MA
(Oxon) in Classics, an MA in Theological Research from Durham University and an
M.Litt (two years research) degree in Theology (Ecclesiastical History), also
from Durham.
He is keen to offer assistance with translation or to give
lessons to any clergy, religious or laity who wanted to learn or improve their
knowledge of Latin and Greek, or to provide assistance to local Catholic
schools in some way. He also offers French.
Should any reader of this blog wish to avail themselves of
Aidan’s wide ranging services he is available for online tuition &c and for
details of terms and conditions he may be reached at aidan.hargitt@gmail.com
