A Seminarian speaks out

US Seminarians praying outside an abortuary

Photo: wdtprs.com


A Seminarian from the USA has responded to my last post regarding the EF Mass being taught in seminaries.

He wishes to remain anonymous and this is perfectly understandable.

I once asked a seminarian studying at Allen Hall, if he planned to celebrate the EF Mass when ordained.

He gave a fudged answer. He said:

"I will do whatever the Holy Father wishes me to do" - He didn't say yes and he didn't say no.

It is quite obvious that, when Pope Benedict reasserted the place of the Tridentine Latin Mass in the life of the Church, he was not doing it because he had nothing else to do that Wednesday afternoon.

He issued his Moto Proprio because he wanted his priests to be free to celebrate both forms of Holy Mass; Ordinary and Extraordinary.

EF Pastor Emeritus and Ora Pro Nobis have both commented on the fact that, whilst the Latin Mass is very important, there are other pressing issues that Seminary Directors should be facing up to.

The books selected for study; they need to be orthodox and sound, not the Catholic world according to Clifford Longley or Kung's Rough Guide to Hell.

The homosexual issue desperately needs to be addressed by those in the seminary system and by the Bishops.

And the pastoral aspect of the priesthood needs sharpening up.

Twenty three years ago I asked the local PP to bless our home; we're still waiting. I have an aged relative in need of the Sacraments, she is still waiting.

But here is the comment made by the Seminarian - it struck a chord with me and I hope that he does not mind me incorporating it in a post:-

"I think you have hit the nail on the head. I'm a postulant at a Seminary in the U.S.A. and I confess that I'm much dismayed at the apparent lack on interest in giving seminarians a grounding in Latin and the Extraordinary Form. Ironically, among my classmates, and indeed, I believe among the wider seminarian community, there is strong interest in preserving the Extraordinary Form, not only for itself, but because we feel knowledge of it will increase our understanding of, and reverence for, the Ordinary Form. Unfortunately, our formation programme does not only not emphasise this aspect of the Church, but completely ignores it. I for one, would love to see things altered, but as a seminarian, one feels somewhat powerless and not in a position to question his formation superiors. However, keep praying that things will change; there are young men out there who want to preserve the full, complete and orthodox views of the Catholic Church".

A new order is needed for the seminaries

                                Every seminarian should be taught this

Not a new monastic order but a new order with regard to teaching how to celebrate the Extraordinary Form of Mass.

It is of no use looking to the parish priests to change their ways.
There is no way that the bulk of current parish priests will undertake to learn how to celebrate the old Mass and it would be a fruitless and divisive exercise to compel them to do so.

An attitude of mind is as necessary as an awareness of the actions and tone of the Latin Mass - so, write off the old guard.

But, in the seminaries it is a nonsense that a six or seven year programme designed to equip young men for the priesthood, deliberately omits one half of the Mass content; the EF Mass.

It is clearly a nonsense to have two forms of the Mass but only to teach the Ordinary Form.

Could you imagine a syllabus for the priesthood that omits philosophy or theology?

No, of course not. It would be ludicrous.

To only offer the Ordinary Form of Mass was surely not in Pope Benedict XVI's mind when he issued  Summorum Pontificum.

The Pope Emeritus never issued a statement or made an address without the concept and the consequences being clearly thought through.

While many castigate him for his Regensberg address on Islam it had the effect of lancing the politically correct boil that would not admit a discussion on Islam let alone any form of criticism.

Summorum Pontificum was clearly designed to right the wrong and to set free the Latin Mass that had been enshrined in the realm of forbidden territory for 50 years - so why is it not part of the training programme?

Of course, we all know why, but what to do?

Perhaps we need a lobby group to organise Rosary sessions outside the Diocesan HQs much in the style that the 40 Days for Life people pray outside abortuaries.

A group that will ginger up the Bishops and embarass them into action (they fear adverse media coverage more than they fear old Nick).

Who will undertake this role?  Would the Latin Mass Society get to grips with this initiative?

It might give them a much needed raison d'etre - they must have a function other than arranging Mass schedules and publishing unreadable magazines.

Dateline London

A two day visit to London on business meant that I could join the Bedford Square 40 Days for Life Vigil on Monday for a little over one hour.

A young man (Jan) was in charge and, in the course of my watch I met Kathy (signing off), Gerald, a philosophy student and Daniel, a French expatriate.

Given that, what the Japanese call "comfort" breaks had to be taken, we were really pretty thin on the ground and more people are needed to register for the remainder of the vigil days. Even if you can only manage 15 or 30 minutes, it will aid the cause tremendously. You can register online HERE.

Jan explained that he had counselled one Nigerian woman that day. She already had one infant and was now pregnant for a second time.
She did not want to abort her child but she was under intense pressure from her parents to do so.
It appears that this is so often the case; the woman wishes to bear the child but the father/parent/'good' friend pushes them into it.

As Jan said: "It is the mother who will carry the burden of pain and anguish, not the parents".

He added that he had offered the woman all the material support and counselling help she might need if she decided to keep the baby.

A priest led us in the Rosary and it turned out that he was no other than the PP of St Patrick's Soho Square, Fr Alexander Sherbrooke. We chatted for a few minutes and when I told him that we and many others in Wales, travelled 70 miles one way to attend a Latin Mass on a Sunday he looked rather bemused.
A hard concept to grasp if you run a city parish.

After my shift I made my way to Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane for the evening Sung Mass and to join Catherine, my youngest daughter there.

En route, I found myself in Soho Square so I called in to St Pat's and lit a candle at the Pieta for family and friends and all bloggers and readers.

On to Corpus Christi, a real haven of peace in an increasingly insane world. Sitting in the church listenening to the shrieks and guffaws coming from outside I was reminded of Belloc's lines:

How I hate the human race

How I hate its silly face

At least, I think they belong to Belloc, someone will put me right no doubt.

The Mass itself was pretty mind blowing; a Requiem mass for the soul of Fr Henty Dodd.

The all male choir were impressive and, although I normally like to hear female altos and sopranos, it was a very professional and moving delivery.

Among the altar servers I spotted one MC from the hallowed ground of Blackfen (he who must be obeyed at the twitch of an eyebrow) plus the usual London gang.

After Mass Catherine and I met up with one of the aristocrats of the blogging world who had been in the congregation. None other than the Marquis of Yns Mon himself.

The three of us trundled off to the now famous Coal Hole, favoured haunt of Frs T & Z when in town.

As it was Lent we sank a number of soft drinks before moving on to eat at Abeno near Charing Cross Road.

Again, with due Lenten observance we went there as it is basically a Japanese fast food outlet although, on this occasion, it took them a long time to produce our order.

Okonomyaki - the Japanese pancake or pizza, perhaps a tad too delicious for Lent but we had to eat something.

One of the highlights of the evening for me was Catherine describing how she and her eldest sister attended an OF Mass recently (no EF being available).

Both girls went to receive Holy Communion wearing mantillas and kneeling to receive. Apparently, the priest and most of the congregation gave them funny looks but, as a father it did my heart good to hear how these two beautiful young women (my words) had the courage to do the right thing. 

And such acts do take courage, believe me.

Quite a day. One with so many highlights. Praying outside an abortuary is something I find strangely uplifting; I don't quite know why.

Attending a glorious Mass.

Meeting up with Catherine and Lord Yns Mon and, yes, the Okonomyaki was pretty good also.

What would Judas have said?

I mean, what if, in the aftermath of Our Blessed Lord's death on the cross, Judas had rejoined the band of apostles instead of committing that despairing act of ultimate self indulgence.

What would he have said to Peter, John and James, Andrew and the others?

Might he have said some of the following?


"His thinkings were disordered and lacking distinction"

"Now is the time for a new direction in the Faith, we need to re-assess our view on divorce and the just war theory"

“The Church now needs to de-centralise, He was not strong in this respect”

“We need to radically reform and put our house in order”

"He was a good theologian but He just couldn't pull it together"

Bishop Burns of Menevia credits bloggers with the ability to influence the Papal election

The Bishop may be over egging it slightly but there is a kernel of perception in what he says. Catholic bloggers have proved time and time again how they can influence both secular and Church affairs.

Sadly, it ends there. The remainder of the Bishop's statement to the press is absolutely crass and, some might say, disloyal to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

How much longer are we prepared to put up with such behaviour from those who are supposed to be the Princes of the Church?

The following is an extract from the 'Wales Online' report, as I am hurrying to catch a train, I have not had time to add my comments; perhaps that is just as well.

Pope Benedict XVI

Bishop of Menevia, Tom Burns wants a new freedom to discuss “currently prohibited” issues including contraception and the remarriage of divorced people.

He further suggests that the cardinals should look beyond their number to choose a successor to Benedict XVI.

The former Royal Navy chaplain writes: “If the cardinals have to look outside their own group, so be it. The last time was in 1378.

“The scene is set for yet another precedent.”

Among the radical changes he has proposed in the Catholic journal the Tablet, he calls for church government to be “stripped of status and elitism” and suggests “a root-and-branch review of the method of appointing bishops” and a third Vatican council.

He expects the internet to shape the decisions of the papal conclave, writing that “electors can probably not avoid being swayed by Twitter, Facebook, and blogs”.

In his article the bishop applauds the former Pope’s 2010 visit to Britain in which there “not a word out of place” but writes that “views emerging from the Vatican on homosexuality as ‘disordered’, appeared excessive, lacking Benedict’s usual distinctions.”

He continues: “He renewed the Church’s historical opposition to women priests, methods of stem-cell research, and enlightened thinking by liberal theologians.”

The bishop then lays out a vision for sweeping change, writing: “Whoever is elected, the time has come to re-open the doors and windows for a new blowing of the Spirit, even a Third Vatican Council, a freedom to discuss key ministerial concerns, freedom of research for ways ahead on key issues affecting marriage (eg the implications of re-marrying after divorce); re-examining ethical questions (eg just war theory, the sale of arms, acceptable intentions and methods of birth control, integrity in public and financial affairs); Church governance (eg developing a simpler and humbler servant Church model, less hierarchical and more collegial, stripped of status and elitism); promoting Vatican II’s principle of subsidiarity (eg through de-centralisation and greater transparency); improving relations between the Holy See and dioceses (eg a root-and-branch review of the method of appointing bishops); and bringing into the College of Cardinals a wider representation (eg of views, experience, traditions to be set and handed on into the future).”

The Welsh bishop argues that the former Pope should not be held personally responsible for the child abuse scandals, writing: “In the minefield of child sexual abuse, the blame attached to him was really unmerited, and his humble and heartfelt apologies were genuinely appreciated by many. It is not Benedict, but the priests convicted of such crimes, who have reduced the Church’s influence and doctrinal credibility.”

Praising Benedict’s decision to retire rather than die in the post, he writes: “In his last days in office, Benedict unwittingly showed a further dimension of his humility and selflessness, by opening the door to future popes to lay down their office freely, yet still respond to God’s call to contemplative prayer.”

He urges the conclave to “ open all doors and considerations,” adding: “The Spirit’s influence is needed to free the cardinal electors of considerations involving electoral blocs – nationalistic, geographical, conceptual, ageist – and there is no place for self-interest, ambition, or career benefits at lower levels.”

Stressing the personal strengths of the individual to take the helm of the church, he states: “Whoever is chosen has to be the right man in the right place at the right time, someone who can bring about much needed change and take others with him because his reputation is untainted and his future will not be enmeshed or smothered by Church bureaucracy, politics, and loneliness.”

He concludes with a final plea for change: “Let the new wine fill new wine skins.”

Read more: Wales Online 

A gift for Easter?

For your parish priest or a priest blogger?

There is a cornucopia of Catholic books, some very old, in John Bevan's latest catalogue.

John has been the leading British Catholic bookseller of old and antiquarian books for at least forty years and many of his works go overseas to the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

For a very modest outlay of £10 you could buy the spirit of St Therese of the Infant Jesus as shown forth by her writings and the testimony of eye witnesses (published 1925) or for a slightly less modest £75 you could order Ribadeneira's Illustrium Scriptorum Religionis Societas Iesu Catalogue of 1609.

I believe that the catalogue is online at www.catholic-books.co.uk - it does make fascinating reading.

Adopt a Cardinal

                                                            

I would like (and pray for) Cardinal Raymond Burke to be elected Pope.

My money (placed 2 years ago) is on Cardinal Marc Ouellet.

My 'adopted' Cardinal is......


                        ....Francesco Monterisi from Italy, born 28.5.1934.
He's been a Cardinal since 20.11.2010 and his function is: Archpriest emeritus of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls

It doesn't matter that Britain has no 'voice' at the Conclave

Letter from Archbishop Vincent Nichols to the Faithful....

ARCHBISHOP’S   HOUSE,

WESTMINSTER, LONDON,  SW1P 1QJ

A CONCLAVE FOR ALL

Letter to Parishes and Schools

March 2013

My brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ

Shortly the Cardinals of the Catholic Church will assemble in the Conclave to choose the next Bishop of Rome, who will replace Benedict XVI as Pope and Successor of St Peter.

Much is made of who will and who won't be present in that Conclave. Some voices are raised to complain that 'Britain does not have a voice.'

But if we understand correctly the nature of the Church and of the Conclave then we know that is not the true or full story.

The full story, or account, of the Church is that it is, most profoundly, a spiritual reality. It is not simply an institution or an organisation for religious or humanitarian purposes. It is more than a human community. Its true life and identity is Christ, the sole redeemer and only one who has broken the barrier of death. In the Church we are bound together in Christ. I do more than 'belong to the Church.' The Church is a living reality that enters my soul. It is in the deepest part of my being.

This is why whenever failures and wounds are inflicted on the Church or laid bare, the pain and distress we feel is so intense and deeply personal.  In the Church we are immersed together in a reality that not only gives us a new identity, beyond every other, but that also fashions us for eternity.

Prayer is one of the deepest expressions of this reality. Prayer confirms in us our unity in Christ. Prayer strengthens us together in the face of every difficulty and deepens in us together the strength of every joy. Prayer is the heartbeat of the Church, which I feel and to which I contribute. Prayer fashions us together in our common enterprise of being the Body of Christ today.

This reality is expressed in the forthcoming Conclave. This reality is the deeper truth of the Conclave. Through prayer it is truly a Conclave for all. No-one is excluded. Everyone can contribute.

The moment the key turns to begin the Conclave, then we take up a very special time of prayer. Whether the Conclave lasts for two days or two weeks, we sustain that prayer. We pray for each and every Cardinal in his decision taking. They are striving to be, first of all, instruments of God, in some ways like pens in the hand of the Lord. We pray for them that they will respond freely and sensitively to the hand that moves them, the mind that directs them. Christ is that hand whose will is one with that of his heavenly Father.

During the Conclave we pray as the Church and for the Church, knowing that this prayer unites us in a common action, a common endeavour: that the new Pope, elected by the Cardinals, is the one chosen by the will of God.

This prayer is our part, our participation, in the Conclave, our contribution to its decision. This is our way of seeking what is best for the Church at this crucial moment in our history.

Do not neglect this task that is given to each one of us. Please make the time of the Conclave a time of very special prayer, in our homes, our schools, our parishes and in the silence of our hearts.

Yours devotedly

XVincent Nichols

Archbishop of Westminster

Yet another haunting poem

                                 The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get,

The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,

The singers and workers that never handled the air.

You will never neglect or beat

Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.

You will never wind up the sucking-thumb

Or scuttle off ghosts that come.

You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,

Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed

children.

I have contracted. I have eased

My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.

I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized

Your luck

And your lives from your unfinished reach,

If I stole your births and your names,

Your straight baby tears and your games,

Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,

and your deaths,

If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,

Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.

Though why should I whine,

Whine that the crime was other than mine?--

Since anyhow you are dead.

Or rather, or instead,

You were never made.

But that too, I am afraid,

Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?

You were born, you had body, you died.

It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.

Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you

All.

This time a Scottish poem on abortion

The Porter by Edwin Morgan

This poem is the last of five in a sequence about an abortion. It sounds best out loud in Scots. 

     Ah know ah tellt them lies at the enquiry. 

     Ah sayed ah thought the wean wis dead 

     when ah took it tae the incinerator. 

     Ah didny think the wean wis dead, 

     but ah didny ken fur shair, did ah? 

     It's no fur me tae question the doctors. 

     Ah get a bag fae the sister, right? 

     She says take that an burn it. She's only 

     passin on the doctor's instructions, 

     but she seen the wean, she thought it wis dead, 

     so ye canny blame her. And the doctor says 

     ye canny blame him. Everybody wants 

     tae come doon on me like a tonna bricks. 

     Ah canny go aboot openin disposal bags - 

     if ah did ah'd be a nervous wreck. 

     Ah passed two electricians in the corridor 

     and ah tellt them the wean wis alive 

     but they thought ah wis jokin. Efter that 

     ah jist shut up, an left it tae the boilerman 

     tae fin oot fur hissel - he couldny miss it 

     could he? The puir wee thing wis squeelin 

     through the bag wis it no? Ah canny see 

     ah had tae tell him whit wis evident. 

     - Ah know ah'm goin on aboot this. 

     But suppose the kiddy could've been saved - 

     or suppose the boilerman hadny noticed it - 

     mah wee lassie's gote a hamster, ye ken? - 

     and ah fixed up a treadmill fur it 

     and it goes roon and roon and roon - 

     it's jist like that. Well, ah'm no in court noo. 

     Don't answer nothin incriminatin, says the sherrif. 

     And that's good enough fur yours truly. 

     And neither ah did, neither ah did, 

     neither ah did, neither ah did.

H/T to Ben at Countercultural Father whose idea it was to publish poems on abortion throughout the 40 Days.

Richard Dawkins for Pope?

              
                      Sorry Dawkins, this is destined for a holy man


Mwah, mwah, mwah....time for those nice men with the sleeveless jacket.

But, in fact, the bookies, Paddy Power have him listed as being a contender. Yes, really.

And the odds?


666-1 (had to be)

Another poem on abortion

Courtesy of Counter Cultural Father and 'Uncomfortably Glum'



And a small tribute to St David of Wales (and, especially Pembrokeshire)

St David, Ora Pro Nobis

Mary the Mother of our God - Pray for Wales - Pray for us all

Our Lady of Cardigan - Ora Pro Nobis