clair010

A very happy and holy Name Day to all those splendid people whose Patron Saint is S Andrew! You don't need to be a Scotsman to have a devotion to S Andrew. His cultus is embedded also in the history of English Christianity in a way which goes back to the Roman origins of our Liturgy even before S Augustine had arrived off the shores of Kent. And it is most happily bound up with those heady days

S Peter, when he wrote his Catholic Epistle, envisaged danger as likely to come from the attentions of the Enemy who tamquam leo rugiens circuit. However, despite PF's pleas for Biodiversity, imaginative plans to reintroduce lions into the English countryside are not currently in the forefront of our public debate. Nor are we likely to release the small pox from its incarceration, or to launch

Tuesday's celebration of the Miraculous Medal ... and the very tasty Mass formula, with its allusions to the Johannine theology of the semeia ['Signs'] of the Lord ... inspired me to ask our Supplex Omnipotentia, our blessed Lady of Cana, for a Sign to strengthen the afflicted Church of which she is herself such a beautiful and powerful Sign. I must confess that when I opened my computer on

Today is the Year's Mind of the Right Reverend the Father in God Eric Waldram Kemp, sometime Lord Bishop of Chichester. Memories crowd in: of the day when, by an act of quasi-papal primacy (immediate and ordinary and episcopal, and so dead in line with Vatican I), George Carey sent a Guildford suffragan clutching a Primatial Commission in his hot little hands to "ordain" women for the Diocese

I wrote this in 2010; I reprint it, together with its admirable thread.  On Saturday 27 November 1830, a young French nun, (S) Catherine Laboure, beheld her second and third visions of the Mother of God in the Sanctuary of her Convent Chapel in the Rue du Bac in Paris. Our Lady appeared to her, radiant, standing on a globe, and with her arms stretched out in a compassionate gesture. From her

In August 2017, the finest theologian of the Anglophone world gave a lecture which was partially published in the Catholic Herald. The fact that the full text was not subsequently available gives rise to an inevitable suspicion that Father was pressurised. That in itself would, if true, be disgraceful enough; a very considerable scandal. The best we humble ordinary folk can do about this is ...

Two quotations from the latest Mueller interview [the italics are mine]. The whole interview, which is superb, should be read, over at Lifesitenews. Bergoglianism ...  Hyperueberultrapapalism ... one might think of it as Catholic Teaching 'taken a bit further', perhaps 'a bit too far'. Not so. The current error ravaging the Christian Tradition is not more than Catholicism; it is less. It is a

I have often used, and commented about it on this blog, Matthew Hazell's highly important Index Lectionum, which reveals the way Holy Scripture was censored in the post-Conciliar 'reforms'. It is a pleasure to commend his latest scholarly work, The Proper of Time in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms (ISBN: 978-1-7307-9522-0). It deals with how the euchology ... collects, secrets,

"I am not at all sure [the definition of Infallibility] will increase the Pope's power - it may restrict it. Hitherto he has done what he would, because its limits were not defined - now he must act by rule."

Cardinal Mueller's book, available in Spanish and German, about the Papal Ministry (The Pope: Mission and Mandate) is currently being translated into English. He writes more and more with the decisive frankness of our own Blessed John Henry Newman. Consider this from his recent interview: "The primacy of the Pope is being undermined by the sycophants and careerists at the papal court."

The happy day has arrived when comes plopping onto our doormats the Saint Lawrence Press ORDO. I enthusiastically commend this admirable publication to readers who are not already familiar with it. It gives 2019 according to the Calendar of the Roman Rite as it existed in 1939; that is, before Ven Pius XII acquired the collaboration of Hannibal Bugnini and began the series of changes which ended

Back now at my computer, I have looked through the Comments and enabled most of them. I gave thumbs-down to one or two which seemed to me to tip over the boundary between reasoned criticism of the current regime in Rome into mere abuse of our Holy Father. I see that the fear has again surfaced that PF might cancel Summorum Pontificum. I think about five years ago I wrote a piece on this which I

It is a matter of great satisfaction to all right-thinking people that the English RC Church is increasingly recovering the extra-liturgical use of the Blessed Sacrament in Benediction and Exposition. I hope mention of one detail will not seem grudging. I have seen Benediction which is interrupted after O Salutaris for a sermon. To my Anglican-trained temperament, it seems highly inappropriate

The young people ... no; some of the young people ... in this University are having a fine time emulating the Geheime Staatspolizei; or combining the Thought Police of 1984 with a dash of the spirit of the English Foxhunt. They have found a Professor of Sociology who has manifested a failure to believe in some currently prescribed Aeschrodoxies. Tally Ho is the order of the day! This academic

An old post, with an old thread.  Fr Colin Stephenson, Vicar of S Mary Mags, Oxford, during its Anglopapalist heyday, recalls someone saying to him: "I shall never forget the first time I went into S Mary Magdalen's, there were two priests hearing confessions, a Mass was being said at one of the altars, and there was Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the Lady Chapel". I remember analogous

Dr Marie Stopes is still a heroine of the sinister movement which spans Eugenics, 'Birth Control', and the Age of Abortion Victrix. It is hardly surprising that she was also anti-Semitic. I wonder if Hitler ever read the gushy letter she sent him in August 1939. But I wonder how often she is admired as the homophobic bigot that she was. Catholic moral teaching, of course, regards genital

Apologies to those of you who get tired of reading me thrusting down your throats the inherited wisdom of the Anglican Catholic tradition; but I can't help being what I am. Today, something written in 1969 by one of our greatest liturgical Anglican scholars, Dr G G Willis. He praises a translation of the Canon which is more or less what the Ordinariate Rite contains ('superb translation ...

Lovely! The Latin Mass Society has just sent me a copy of their ORDO for 2019. And, on the inside back cover, they show an advert for a book by one of those pre-Conciliar Papalist Anglicans. In 1955, an Anglican Catholic priest, Hugh Ross Williamson, wrote a The Great Prayer about the Canon of the Mass, the First Eucharistic Prayer. Here is an extract from the Introduction. "To know the prayer

AFTER MY POST YESTERDAY, I REPRINT A PIECE WHICH I HAVE SHOWN IN 2017 AND 2015, TOGETHER WITH AUTHENTIC  PERIOD THREADS!! 2017: Someone called Elton John said not long ago how much he admires Pope Francis. Very commendable! What I found intriguing was that he couldn't leave it there; he couldn't resist the temptation to go on to attack the previous Roman Pontiff ... curiously concentrating on

During the last pontificate, there was an insistent and thoroughly nasty campaign to smear Pope Benedict, which came to a not inconsiderable extent from the ferocious ideologues of homosexualism. Enraged perhaps by some of his magisterial teaching when he was Prefect of the CDF, they alleged that he was himself a homosexual; that he sometimes went to his old flat and spent the night there with

... are a great temptation, I find, to those of us who like to appear knowledgeable without actually ... er ... reading ... all these wretched new boks. Apparently the late Stephen Hawking has bequeathed to his admirers some Postumous Papers, in which, so the Sunday Times informs us, he foresees that we we shall successfully transform ourselves into posthuman, inorganic beings. Creating immortal

I trust that readers will recall the emphasis laid by Blessed John Henry Newman on the essentially negative function of the Papal Ministry. " ... the Church of Rome ... has originated nothing, and has only served as a sort of remora, or break in the development of doctrine ... such I conceive to be the main purpose of its extraordinary gift." This, of course, was also affirmed by Vatican I in

Again, I am going to be having... I hope ... a quiet ten days. Hopefully, a blogpost will be published every day, but I shall not be reviewing comments (they will have to await my re-emergence) or, indeed, emails. You wouldn't believe how refreshing it is to get away from modern communications!

The first antiphon which, if we serve a Church or diocese with S Martin as its Patron, we will say or sing tomorrow at Lauds for S Martin of Tours, shows his disciples asking him not to desert them because Rapacious Wolves will invade his flock. (I wonder why that antiphon went missing from the Liturgia Horarum.) Rapacious Wolves are always around. Look at (via a Concordance) the New Testament.

The disquiet about broad hints of Internet Censorship of Catholic writers which emerged from the 'Synod' is only just dying down, and now the admirable Fr Zuhlsdorf and other usually reliable sources have reported that there are two congruous stories circulating about the kindly and paternal interest which Bergoglian Rome is taking in two particular bishops. (1) Cardinal Burke. The rumour

Perhaps the most important teaching of our great Anglican Doctor C S Lewis was his insistence on the importance of reading Old Books. I believe he once recommended never reading a new book until one had read two old ones. He emphasised that an Old Book is not always right; but the characteristic errors of one age are rarely the same as those of another age. We read Old Books not because we are

This year, of course, the two commemorations coincide; the nearest Sunday to November 11 is November 11! According to the LMS ORDO, there is provision on Remembrance Sunday, in England and Wales, for one Requiem to be said or sung. Rubricarius once tried to find the provision for this in Roman legislative texts. He drew a blank. I possess a Brentwood Diocesan Calendar of 1958; and a (

Visual 'media' have their interests. On October 29, Dr Kirk (GKIRKUK) publised a photograph of PF surrounded by young people ... all so spontaneous ... so happy ... Yes? I would say, No; the picture is carefully posed almost as if by that master of disegna, Poussin. Notice how, in the bottom of the picture, the young people are linked together by one youth's arm reaching out to another youth's

It is not easy to know what to make of the precipitous removal by PF of an American bishop called Holley. For nearly two millennia, Roman pontiffs have intervened to remove dysfunctional bishops. This was happening even before the Catholic Church had such a thing as Canon Law. And one can understand why, given the present atmosphere, it might be necessary for a Universal Primacy to act quickly

"Before He died, Christ consigned the whole meaning of His sacrificial death to an Action. He took bread and broke it, and said 'This is my Body'. He took the cup and said 'This is the New Covenant in my Blood'. He gave to that Act the character of a sign - an effective sign. 'As often as ye eat this Bread and drink this Cup ye do proclaim the Lord's death till he come'. " I only have time to

Traddies ... rightly ... complain that 'mainstrtream' Catholics have usually never been taught about Transsubstantiation. The poor things are even less likely to have been told about the Mass as a ... er ... the Sacrifice. Once a well-meaning proof-reader corrected, in a ms of mine, "Sacrifice" to "Sacrament", convinced that I had simply made a typo! Here is Dom Gregory Dix. "For the

All Saints; and that marvellous Reading from the Apocalypse [Chapter 7] of S John the Divine. Except that ...  ... you have to go to the Old Mass if you want to hear it unbowdlerised. If you go to Hannibal Bugnini's Mass on All Saints' Day, you will find that the superb drum-roll of the Twelve Tribes of the people of Israel, each tribe mentioned by name with the reassurance that their Twelve

The much-admired Dr Peter Kwasniewski was in Oxford on Friday evening to give a lecture at the Church of SS Gregory and Augustine; he spoke with crisp and elegant decision about the dogmatic teaching of the Canon of the Mass. But that makes his lecture sound pompously dry. It was anything but. Don't miss the opportunity to go and hear him, if the chance presents itself to you during his lecture