New Saints

Just seen the motu proprio about the  new criteria for a certain category of martyrs, those who give their lives for others. Maybe I am hyper-critical, or get a little to anxious about anything coming from Rome where ambiguity seems deliberately written into documents and where 2+2 can actually equal 5. I get anxious about anything that distracts us from Christ. On a quick reading it seems that it could be possible to be beatified for a love of humanity rather than for love of Jesus Christ.
Do feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

I suppose I have a certain growing concern about the canonisation/beatification of so many, once for Christians in both East and West a person's sanctity was judged on their ability to intercede and work miracles, their post-mortem activity was often much more important than their lives. St Thomas Becket, for example, was raised to the altar not so much for his legal disputes with the King but for the stream of healing miracles after his death.

There is a danger too in the beatification or canonisation of an ideology or a faction rather than a truly holy person who is now in Heaven and enjoying the Beatific vision, interceding for the Church and its members. It would regrettable if canonisation/beatification became a posthumous ecclesiastical decoration for merely the great and the good.

A Coptic Orthodox friend says their criteria for canonisation is the need to be dead for 70 years and for numerous miracles or supernatural occurrences at their intercession or at the place of their burial.

Simply, I get worried about the removal of the clearly supernatural elements in our faith.

Language: The Great Divider

Phone calls on Saturday or Sunday mornings are normally about Mass times. This Sunday I had a phone call asking, “Where is there Mass at midday in Brighton?” I replied, “There is one here at 12.30, it is in Polish”. The response, “Is there one in Vietnamese? If not we can do English but not Polish”.

Language is of course the great divider, I would have got, I suspect a similar response if I said Mass was in Latin. It is amazing to think most of the world was evangelised when the Church used sacral Latin.

Brighton is a veritable Babel of different languages, Polish amongst the Catholic community is certainly in the majority, and the Polish bishops ensure that for Poles there is a good system of chaplains, having a separate Mass perhaps makes it difficult for the children of Poles who are more comfortable with English to integrate, especially when the move from home. Until the last ten years Portuguese would have been the next biggest language group, there is as far as I know only one Portuguese speaking priest in the country, the result is that hardly any Portuguese seem to come to Mass, though when they return home they might well be devout.

Language for us is a problem, it is of its nature divisive, in the way it isn’t for Islam whose ‘liturgy’ is in classical Arabic, it is of course the sermon that becomes the problem for them as it was for us.

Though we say Latin in the past was the great unifier of Western Catholicism, until just before the Council silence in the liturgy amidst coughs and shuffling of the congregation was the norm, because of course microphones on the altar were forbidden, 'amplification' on the sanctuary was done by the clergy singing, this didn't happen at low Mass which is what most people attended, so in point of fact most people were evangelised by encouraging a strong devotional life based as much on the domestic and school as it was on the parish or mission church. He was merely responsible for celebrating the sacrament properly, praying and possibly preaching a half good sermon and not much else, the Church survived and prospered.

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As an addenda: I thought this from NLM was interesting, in the world of the Traditional though priests as a species were important, as individuals, at least in church, they were not that important, I remember a friend who left who said he couldn't cope 'with the weight, the responsibility'. He wasn't the type of priest who could "say the black and do the red".

The Novus Ordo Missae has horizontal and vertical dimensions, but what it lacks is precisely depth. The depth has to be brought to it from the outside — from the interior spirit of the celebrant, from the accidents of place and time, from the luck of options well-chosen and well-executed.[1] As it stands, the modern liturgy does not supply that depth in and of itself. It is utterly at the mercy of the ars celebrandi, the community, the authorities, the prevailing mores of society. Even as contemporary society is living off of the fumes of traditional morality, so too the contemporary liturgy, to the extent that it is sanctifying of men and glorifying of God, is living off of the fumes of traditional liturgy.

Abrogation of Summorum Pontificum?

A French newspaper has reported Pope Francis, once Benedict dies, will abrogate Summorum Pontificum and handover Old Rite's celebration solely to the SSPX. Apart from saying that the Traditional Mass was not and could not be abrogated, he gave the right to every Western Catholic priest to say which ever form of the Roman Rite they chose; pretty logical considering the non-abrogation of the Ancient Mass.

Will Francis abrogate it? That is anyone's guess, but there are lots of questions that arise in my mind

• Will the SSPX be reconciled Rome? I would suspect not but then all Francis needs to do is say they are reconciled and there are few problems, except possibly the appointment of successors to Bp Fellay et al.
• Would the members of Traditional Institutes like the Society of St Peter or the Institute of Christ the King join the reconciled SSPX? I doubt it, there are lots of wounds in what some might like term the Traditional Movement, so many sacrifices and humiliations undergone to remain faithful to union with Rome and distant from the SSPX.
• Would the SSPX want these other Institutes? I doubt it they have their own structures and spirituality. As charming as the three remaining SSPX might be, it is significant that Abp Lefebrve chose them for anything other than a leadership role, he wanted leadership of his priestly society to be priests, not a bishop.
• There are many diocesan priests, there are Dominican's and members of other religious institutes like Oratorians who have developed a deep love of the Usus Antiquior, will heads of these orders like to lose, often the younger and the brighter of their priests? Very unlikely, Figaro recently reported a quarter of priest ordained in France this year are what it calls 'traditional priests', ordained in the traditional rite but one suspects that a significant number of younger priests 'have sympathies' and with Pope pushing his own agenda on the Church these sympathies are likely to grow.
• What about the Bishop? Most would not want the SSPX involved in their diocese in a significant way or looking after significant numbers of 'their' faithful, or gathering vocations from 'their' young men (even, especially, if they can't gather them themselves). Yesterday, Bishop Campbell handed over English Martyrs, Preston. to the Institute of Christ the King, another big Preston Church to a traditional institute, one presumes such an action followed by several of our bishops is not done because they consider these priests museum curators but effective evangelists, where others have failed, but within, not outside, of their diocese and their personal oversight.

What I can see happening is Pope Francis, possibly, refusing bishops the right to celebrate ordinations in the Old Rite but I don't think that will work either. It might be seen as sniping at one or two Cardinals

The Child

At that time Jesus exclaimed, 'I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children.  Matthew 11:25 

In this context, if we wish to understand what it means to become children we must look at Jesus, he is the Son, who was totally at one with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, It, and "Unless you become like little children ...", should be, can only be, understood in a Christology sense: seeing Jesus as THE child.

The Church has always understood these statements in the context of embracing the Evangelical Counsels, of casting off other dependencies until there is only the relationship of the soul and the Father, without any other affections and yet as we grow in the spiritual life gives us the capacity to love all that is created and all that belongs the Father.

Orgies and scandals

From the news it would seem that Vatican City is awash with gay orgies, but actually apart from the name of the cleric involved and the fact that Cardinal Cocopalmiero was the tenant of the flat in the Palace of the Holy Office and had been the close friend and patron of the prelate who seems not to have been arrested but take to hospital for a drug overdose, little seems to have been disclosed not even an estimate of the numbers involved. However it does seem as if there is a certain lack of a moral compass in the Vatican.

I am shocked by orgies happening in the Vatican, if indeed they are. I was shocked by news of a CDF employee who has left the priesthood to form a liaison with his homosexual lover but though these things are very sad, they happen.

What I find more shocking is the way in which Cardinal Mueller has been treated. It makes me think of a parishioner who was kind to everyone outside of his family but at home scarcely spoke to his wife and neglected his children, As the years progressed it became apparent that the neglect developed into sexual abuse and the silence towards the wife evolved into serious physical/psycho-sexual abuse of her.

In the Vatican I don't know what is going on but it seems very strange, if Cardinal Mueller is to be believed that he was told of his dismissal at the very last moment of his term of office and in the most perfunctory way - from the reports, "[the Pope] communicated his decision", it is unclear that the Cardinal even had an audience with the Pope, it might have been a message or even an email was sent from a third person. Mueller's account of his sacking seems to lack even the warmth of his account of his audience with the Pope a few months ago when he asked for reasons why he should sack three priests from the CDF, he wasn't given a reason, Francis merely ended the audience, according to Mueller, by saying, "I am the Pope". Mueller could of course be mistaken or deliberately lying but if not it would seem to suggest that there is a serious problem at the head of the Church.

Similarly Pope Francis failure to meet with the Cardinals before the last Consistory seems a little strange, presumably they had come to Rome from all parts of the world to speak to the Pope and not just to add a splash of scarlet to photographs of the ceremony. Even if other Popes have done the same, Francis is after all the Pope of de-centralisation, of accompaniment, of synodality, of collaboration, of parrhesia. I am left wondering if the Holy Father's excessively heavy workload, lack of holidays and time off, at his age has left him and the Church with mental health concerns. In the past of course he has often spoken of his psychological needs.


Pray for him.


According to Italian media reports, Pope Francis has started isolating himself in the refectory of the Casa Santa Marta where he is living. Until now, the table, where he was eating, was in the center of the refectory. Now it is in a corner. Francis is eating with his back toward the others surrounding himself with a few selected table companions.

Summorum Pontificum Day

I was at the Verona Opera Festival when Summorum Pontificum was published but it wasn't until All Souls Day that I first attempted to say the Old Rite for the first time, it was a 'mystical' experience, I entered a world that had been closed to me. I offered Mass for my deceased family, there was something wonderful in using the very words and rites of the Mass that would have been used for the funerals for most of them since the time of St Gregory.

I am not sure that Benedict expected that ten years on this "Gregorian Rite" in every parish, or even every diocese of the world. I suspect he intended to create something at grassroots, certainly not a movement but an attitude or an awareness of the history and origins of the Mass and the Church.

Benedict often writes quite scathingly about the Novus Ordo, "it was a rite created ex nihil  ..." or "a rite that contradicts Sacrosanctum Concillium [the VII document on the liturgy]" his aim I think was not a return to the past but as he actually says, an attempt to establish two rites within the Church that were mutually enriching and to remind the Latin Church of its roots, its recent history and to see the present Church in continuity with its past.

One gets more than the impression from his writings that he was dismayed by how post-concilliar liturgy had developed as a celebration of the hermenuitic of rupture, much that he tried to do was stitching the head back on to the body, or giving the Novus Ordo, as it had developed by his Pontificate, historic, dare I say, Catholic roots.

Anyhow, happy Summorum Pontificum day, especially to those young priests who love the ancient Rite, and most especially to those who have some connection with this parish who have discovered a vocation through it. God bless you!

An Ecumenical Problem

I get increasingly shocked by news which comes from Rome, some of the more assiduous followers of such news seem to have their faith severely damaged whilst others deepen the faith but seem to be less committed the institution of the Church,

One of my former parishioners and an American who is an occasional correspondent fall into this category, both are thinking very seriously of joining the Orthodox church, I know three of four others who have followed the same route in the past.

Both had been satisfied that being 'Catholic' meant being in communion with Pope but over the last few years especially both have been thinking more deeply. In Orthodox literature and websites they have come across the more ancient definition of 'Catholic' by St Vincent of Lerins, the fifth century western theologian who said, 'Quod Ubique, Quod Semper, Quod ab Omnibus' being Catholic one needs to believe that which is believed everywhere, always and by all.

For one of them Amoris Laetitia, with the interpretation which the Pope seems to put on it, with the footnote which he had apparently forgotten has been the last straw and has led him  to question other things about the Catholic Church's claim to be catholic.

For both the changes in the post Vatican II liturgy, for one primarily the changes in the ancient lectionary, he claims the new one gives a very different picture of Christ than does old lectionary, or the Orthodox lectionary or even the lectionary of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

For the other it is loss of fasting and other ascetical practices, he says that in the Catholic Church we have mitigated almost out of existence a tradition that goes back to Jesus and the Apostles, or at least to the ancient Councils. For both the post Concilliar attitude to religious liberty and to the other monotheistic faiths is a serious break with the Tradition. A major stumbling block for one is the change introduced by S Pius X in the order of the Sacraments (allowing Communion before Confirmation/Chrismation). Though he believe in them, for one has serious problems, though he believes in them in our Western way, with the papal definitions of the Immaculate Conception and Assumption.

In this Ecumenical Age I am not sure how to offer convincing arguments I might once have put forward especially as some of our leading Prelates see no distinction between the Catholic faith and any other.