An Impious Sale by Ramsgate Monks

Fr Mildew reports that the former monks of Ramsgate who have now relocated to the former Franciscan Friary at Chilworth are selling off at public auction some truly beautiful objects. Fr Mildew raises concern about selling chalices which have been consecrated for sacred worship, as if the act of consecration meant nothing, fortunately the reliquaries on sale appear empty.


Though I wish the monks well, I hate to say this but this seems to be an impious sale that I like Fr Clifton find very distressing. The catalogue can be seen here. I only hope and pray that these sacred objects are bought and restored to the holy use for which they were intended. However their fate is more likely to become part of some decorative scheme or possibly even to be used for a sacrilegious purpose, auctions are like that.

What was it that Pope said about those things considered holy by previous generations?

St Benedict says monks should sell things a little cheaper than market prices. I am sure that if the monks are happy with the estimated figures, which seem surprising low these holy objects could be sold by private sale to clergy who would use them well and guarantee their continued sacred use. I would be willing to do it for them.

Many of the objects were donated in memory of loved ones, there is a ciborium with an inscription asking for prayers for a young pilot killed presumably in the Battle of Britain and lots of other things which were never intended for sale but as offerings at the altar for the souls of the departed. I just hope the Abbot has permission from the donors descendants for their disposal.

It appears disrespectful to their memory.

The monastery can be contacted here, I think, I have of course sent them a link to this post, perhaps in charity you might contact the monks too.
I am sure they are good men but just being foolish and obviously ill advised.

"I have raised the question of whether the monks had a right to do so and the legalities the Diocese will look into. However, and whatever the case, I deplore the fact that these effects were not offered to the diocese before departure of the monks. You can see these effects and the catalogue of which they are a section by going to the auction web site. www.dominicwinter.co.uk and following the links to the auction of art and antiques 8th and 9th Feb. Now whatever else transpires they have no right to sell by auction two important chalices which are consecrated objects. There is an ADVERT for the sale in todays "Daily Telegraph" which illustrates two items. One is a "recusant chalice " (in fact it is one of two chalices in the sale). Now judging by the picture it is certainly an old chalice but cannot be a true recusant chalice. These were small chalices which could be unscrewed into two pieces for easy transportation by the missioners who travelled the country whilst persecution of Catholics was strong. The valuation is £3ooo.oo to £5000.00 which might be OK as a valuation if it is a recusant chalice but is a false figure for the chalice based on age alone. However this begs the question...A chalice is a consecrated object and should not be sold at all, only handed on. To sell consecrated objects is simony and against Canon Law.
There are several other items including a pair of Altar Candelabra by Hardman. The Abbey was built by AW Pugin who used Hardman's for all necessary silver work and ornamentation in Churchs designed by AW P.
I will endeavour to find out if the monks have right of ownership...but the chalices should be withdrawn anyway."

Missio Metropolis: Liverpool

Catholic Commentary reports that the Archdiocese of Liverpool has been chosen to take part in a programme this Lent called Missio Metropolis, which will be evaluated to inform the forthcoming Synod of Bishops dedicated to the theme of the "new evangelisation".

If you look at the Bishop's Conference website's description of what is going to happen, there isn't actually a great deal, except the Archbishop is doing what I presume he always does, he's presiding at the Liturgy and preaching.

The other 12 European dioceses where this is happening are Barcelona, Budapest, Dublin, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Mechelen-Bruxelles, Paris, Turin, Vienna, Warsaw and Zagreb, all of which have cathedrals in the heart of the main city of their diocese, presumably the difference this year is that the role of the bishop teaching in his diocese will be given a little more advertising and given a little more importance.

They Won't Leave the Pope's House

I thought you might enjoy this, the Pope releases doves, from Sunday's Angelus but "they won't leave the Pope's house", he says and chuckles. I have same problem with pigeons at times.

Celibacy

A much respected Irish missionary has recently spoken of clerical celibacy coming to an end, it seems to be a popular Irish thing to suggest. The mess that the Church in Ireland is in doesn't quite give authority to the voice of  of those who dissent from the Tradition of the West.

Over the past forty years celibacy has been talked down by so many bishops and clergy, "that which previous generations considered holy ..." now by many is simply an embarrassment, even identified as a cause of our problems.

Today's (OF) second reading reminds us of the dynamic nature of celibacy, it is about wholehearted commitment to Christ, having no other concern but him. The celibacy recommended by Paul presumably because he has as its model the celibacy of Jesus Christ himself. The Greeks take clerical beards as being an icon of Christ, in the West we have regarded celibacy in the same way, it is an icon of that longing for God at the heart of the relationship of the Son for the Father, it is profoundly Trinitarian, in that it can only be lived in the Power of the Holy Spirit.

Our problems with understanding celibacy seems very much linked to our problems in understanding asceticism today, it simply isn't part of current Christian spirituality, but then neither is any form of heroism, it is part of a feminisation of the Church.

Married priests both of the East and those recent additions in the West from Anglicanism and Episcopalianism etc do a good  job, they function well, though those with young families are often torn between family and church but with the priesthood we are speaking, I would hope, about more than function, we are concerned about "being", what a man is, what he signifies, what desires are in the depths of his being, in his very entrails.

When Jesus speaks about those who choose celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom, always he holds up a hope of an eternal reward. With celibacy in practice, there is a dynamic of incompleteness and longing. in Christian celibacy that can only be satisfied by God. There is voluntary woundedness, even a desire for the continued wounding of the Cross that is incomprehensible to the world and secularised church that speaks of holiness as wholeness and finds death to self as folly and a stumbling block. The desk and grey suit, professionalism, smoothness and the corporate sense do not sit well with celibacy.

I find it fascinating that our Eastern bishops whenever celibacy is raised in a Synod, as happened at the Synod on the Eucharist, are the first to defend it and to regard it as the great treasure of the Western Church, a treasure they recognise and we do not. The Eastern experience comes from something lived, where there are both married and celibate clergy, though even in the East, though all bishops and the higher clergy are in theory "monks" most have never gone through a novitiate of any kind, they are above all those who have chosen celibacy, whereas those who are married, have chosen the lesser part. 

Maynooth Closing a Few Doors

There has been grumbling in Ireland and even in NCR because the trustees of Ireland's only seminary outside Rome, Maynooth is trying to seperate living accomodation of those studying for the priesthood from the students of the secular university that now occupy buildings that were formerly entirely given over to priestly formation.
Shane sent me a link to an article of 1978 talking about the folly of a seminary that in so many respects had become a secular college.
If one wants social workers then students to a secular institution, if you want men totally dedicated to Christ, to prayer, to the spritual life, to asceticism, to the the study of the person and ways of Jesus Christ then they have to spend time with him, to come away and live apart.
The NCR article by Eugene Cullen Kennedy seems to demonstrate the secularism that many would want their clergy to take on.
Whether a few doors and a seperate dining hall are enough to save Maynooth we will learn later this year when the Holy Sees report on the Irish Church is made public.

Rage and Wrath

I've already said how interested I am in the growing public anger with President Obama of the US bishops
Below is an extract from a speech by Bishop David A. Zubik of the Diocese of Pittsburg

Kathleen Sebelius and through her, the Obama administration, have said “To Hell with You” to the Catholic faithful of the United States. •To Hell with your religious beliefs,
•To Hell with your religious liberty,
•To Hell with your freedom of conscience.
We’ll give you a year, they are saying, and then you have to knuckle under. As Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops responded, “in effect, the president is saying that we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”

In Fance Christians have been on the streets:


In England characteristicly we tend to discuss things in London Clubs or Westminster committee rooms, perhaps we are too enamoured by the Establishment to openly confront it, as happened over adoption agencies. Though, over one scrap a decade or two ago a  auxilliary bishop did say to me, "Well, the Government should always knows we could close our schools". I think he was an exception, he is now deceased.

A question: how militant can we legitimately get?

Change and Revival in all around I see

The Church  in 2008


The Church at Christmas Midnight Mass


This is how the Church was the week before Christmas, it shows the lighting brackets.

One of things that seems to be popular is our 10.30 Sunday Mass which we have started celebrating ad orientem, the numbers have gone up quite noticeably

We were talking about Candlemas earlier today and watching this old video, everything seems to have improved, not just the Church but our serving, our choir, everything - except my singing.
Incidently, have a Candlemas Missa Cantata, with procession, this year, at 7.30pm. I think this video was taken the year the roads were impassable with snow - say a prayer for this years.



We were talking about Candlemas earlier today and watching this old video, everything seems to have improved, not just the Church but our serving, our choir, everything (except my singing).

Obama Unites US Church

President Obama has most probably done the Catholic Church in the US a great favour by forcing it into a position where it has had to unite to oppose his healthcare proposals. Though Archbishop Nichols might be oblivious to "what is down the road", his American brothers are only too aware. It is the removal of the Catholic Church from the public forum, the severe limiting of  its service of the community and probably it itself having to lay off tens of thousands of its lay employees to avoid having to go against conscience and pay for contraception or sterilisation.
In England such concerns would be expressed behind closed doors, normally ending up with the Church conceding to the Governments position, in the US the Bishops have used the media coverage to explain to the public the Church's teaching, here we are less robust and our people suffer doctrinal confusion.
The Wall Street Journal has this to say:

Less predictable—and far more interesting—has been the heat from the Catholic left, including many who have in the past given the president vital cover. In a post for the left-leaning National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters minces few words. Under the headline "J'ACCUSE," he rightly takes the president to the woodshed for the politics of the decision, for the substance, and for how "shamefully" it treats "those Catholics who went out on a limb" for him.

The message Mr. Obama is sending, says Mr. Winters, is "that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our Church has built over the years to be Catholic in ways that are important to us."

Mr. Winters is not alone. The liberal Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, blogged that he "cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience"—and he urged people to fight it. Another liberal favorite, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., has raised the specter of "civil disobedience" and vowed that he will drop coverage for diocesan workers rather than comply. They are joined in their expressions of discontent by the leaders of Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities, which alone employs 70,000 people.

thanks to Luke Coppen
Comments: are welcome but make sure they are sensible, my tolerance of the madcap, or raving has reached its limit!

CAFOD against Boris' Island

My attention was drawn to a letter in the Telegraph from CAFOD and Christian Aid. Why is the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development involved in in ecological lobbying about a distinctly London issue?

SIR - A new hub airport in the Thames Estuary would be a disaster for the environment, and, as a result, for people and wildlife in this country and globally. What's more, there is no clear support for this airport from the British aviation industry. We know this because similar proposals have been considered by previous governments on at least three occasions, and each time they've been thrown out If anything, the case for Boris Island will only look worse this time round, because action on climate change is needed more urgently than ever. Aviation is already responsible for more than a fifth of the UK transport sector's greenhouse gas emissions, and an airport accommodating 180 million passengers each year, as proposed by Boris Johnson, would be much larger than any airport in operation in the world today. Such a scheme would effectively be the death knell for the Government's promise to be the greenest ever, and would undermine its ability to show international climate leadership. That's why we will be opposing it every step of the way.

Paul Brannen, Christian Aid
Neil Thorns, Cafod
Martin Harper, RSPB
Craig Bennet, Friends of the Earth
and 10 others; see telegraph.co.uk

Telegraph Letters Sat 21 Jan 2012, Eric Hester seems to sum up my own thoughts.

SIR - It is not surprising that a letter disagreeing with a Thames Estuary airport as "a disaster for the environment" is signed by representatives of Friends of the Earth and the RSPB. It is surprising that it is also signed by representatives of Christian Aid and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. If Christian charities that collect money to help people in poor parts of the world know nothing about the subject, it seems odd to sign a public letter. If they allow staff to spend time studying the facts about the airport, how can they can justify using them in this way rather than in the ways for which people donate money - helping the world's poor? Eric Hester
Bolton, Lancashire

An airport in the Thames estuary might indeed be environmentally damaging but there other agencies which have a role in pointing this out like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Friends of the Earth, or Green Peace even the Green Party but the involvement of the Catholic Church of England and Wales' fund for overseas development seems to stretching their mandate more than a little.
It raises the issue, yet again, as to whether CAFOD is opposing Boris' Island simply because CAFOD allies itself with British left-wing politics.

Kikoists

I am a little confused about the "Kikoists", the Neo-Catechetical Way; has the Pope approved of their rites or not, or rather are they obedient to the calls that their celebrations of the Mass are integrated into parish life or are private exclusive affairs and are they celebrated according to the liturgical books of the Church?

I know they have been given special permission to have the sign of peace before the Offertory and to have short introductions to the readings. What they do not have is permission to do is to receive the Body of Christ sitting, to use tables instead of consecrated altars, to appoint their own ministers to teach during the Liturgy.

There is a lot more that is concerning about them, their tendency to break away from the mainstream Church, to regard themselves in a sense as being some kind of "pure" Catholics and the rest of us as being in need of conversion, not so much to Christ but there own brand of the faith and the teaching of their own leaders.

To me they seem to be modern day Montanists, appointing their own ministers who have power above and beyond the heirarchy of the Church, they have their own rites and edit Catholic theology according to their own lights, they seem to have their own catechism too, not for them the Catechism of the Catholic Church but the writings of their own "prophets".

St Agnes the Child Martyr

I find the little skull of St Agnes in her church in Piazza Navona very moving because it is so obviously the skull of a small child.

Saint Ambrose says:

Today is the birthday of a virgin; let us imitate her purity. It is the birthday of a martyr; let us offer ourselves in sacrifice. It is the birthday of St Agnes, who is said to have suffered martyrdom at the age of twelve. There was little or no room in that small body for a wound. Yet she shows no fear of the blood-stained hands of her executioners. She offers her whole body to be put to the sword by fierce soldiers. She is too young to know of death, yet she is ready to face it. Dragged against her will to the altars, she stretches out her hands to the Lord in the midst of the flames, making the triumphant sign of Christ the victor on the altars of sacrilege. She puts her neck and hands in iron chains, but no chain can hold fast her tiny limbs. In the midst of tears, she sheds no tears herself. She stood still, she prayed, she offered her neck. You could see fear in the eyes of the executioner, as if he were the one condemned. His right hand trembled, his face grew pale as he saw the girl's peril, while she had no fear for herself. One victim, but a double martydom, to modesty and to religion; St Agnes preserved her virginity and gained a martyr's crown."

The age of the child martyr is not dead in Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, in China and East Asia children suffer and die for the Catholic faith.

Abortion ads on your TV

 And now along with loo roll and breakfast cereal  the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) are to allow abortionists to advertise tearing a child limb from limb in its mother's womb on television and radio.
“BCAP noted that such organisations offer legally available services and, if they comply with other rules in the BCAP Code, there is nothing to prevent them from advertising their services like other currently allowed (post-conception advice services) PCAS, in a responsible manner which does not mislead, harm or offend audiences.”

So if you are offended - complain complain complain! Under previous rules, only one advert concerning abortions, by the charity Marie Stopes International, has ever been aired on UK screens. The advert, in 2010, attracted more than 4,500 complaints.

Reading Faithful

Do other parish priests have to put up with a faithful who read books AND church documents?
All I insist on from Clare our Director of Music and Andrew our Master of Ceremomies is that we do what we what the liturgical books tell us to do.
This is what appears on my choir's blog, entitled Should We sing the Gradual?

Switching from the Responsorial Psalm to the Gradual could be deemed controversial in many parishes. Despite the stipulation that the chant of the Graduale should be the first choice in the Novus Ordo, and the Responsorial Psalm is the second, our liturgical books give the Responsorial Psalm as the only option.

Crusades

Fr Lucie-Smith recommended it and I think it is pretty good, you can watch Crusades on iplayer for the next few days.
Thomas Asbridge tries to address the violence of the Crusades in this new series, for the BBC, it seems to be relatively objective, not the normal Christians: bad, Muslims: good, that I have come to expect.
Asbridge in this first programme identifies the high devotion that inspired the First Crusade, and the reasons that the ideal soon fell  into barbaric bloodshed.