Mgr Pozzo on the importance of the 'Old Rite'

Ht Fr Tim

Full transcript (in English translation) of the interview Mgr Pozzo has given here.

"Because the ancient rite of the Mass makes explicit and highlights certain values and certain fundamental aspects of the liturgy that deserve to be maintained, and I am not speaking only about the Latin or Gregorian chant, I am speaking about the sense of mystery, of the sacred, the sense of the Mass as a sacrifice, the real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the fact that there are great moments of interior recollection, interior participation in the divine liturgy. All these are fundamental elements which are particularly highlighted in the ancient rite of the Mass. I am not saying that these elements do not exist in the Mass of Paul VI's reform, but I am saying that they are highlighted much more and this can enrich even those who celebrate or participate in the ordinary form of the Mass."



Fr Tim notes in parenthesis:
(The expression in the first sentence is "la Messa nel rito antico" - "Mass in the old rite" would be simplest literal English translation. This expression, used by the Secretary of Ecclesia Dei, has also been used by Pope Benedict. It is not a naughty expression.)

Letter of the week, from the Catholic Herald

There are some good letters in the Catholic Herald this weekend; this one I thought worth re-typing to make it available to a wider audience. The Editors have given it the title: 'I am a tortured liberal but I am hoping for more Latin in the liturgy.'

Sir,

I write as a "tortured liberal" Catholic ("progressive" on most of the predictable issues). Yet I recently found myself joining both the Latin Mass Society (LMS) and the Association for Latin Liturgy (ALL), in exasperation at our bishops' response earlier this year to Universae Ecclesiae, following that made to Summorum Pontificum in 2007.

Apparently, current provision of the Extraordinary Form (EF) needs no expansion and curriculum pressure in seminaries precludes accommodating the requested formation in Latin and the EF. Is this really the "generous" welcome these documents ask of our hierarchy?

I have concluded that it is only by supporting organisations such as the LMS and the ALL that the Holy Father's explicit wish to restore and extend the use of Latin in the liturgy has any hope of making progress. These bodies' EF and Ordinary Form Masses, other services, with the courses in chant, formation for priests, servers and faithful in the Mass and the Latin language, all seem to chime with the current liturgical renewal and reinforcement of Catholic identity agenda. Indeed, one might expect our dioceses to be undertaking such initiatives.

I recently attended two EF Masses at St James's, Spanish Place, after an absence of nine or 10 months. I estimate that the congregation had doubled in that time, comprising a wide range of age, class and ethnicity: someone is clearly doing something right here.

The Tablet's coverage of World Youth Day in Madrid noted that the Pope celebrated most or all of his Masses in Latin, but that his youthful congregations were largely unable to deliver their responses. His Holiness seems to expect young Catholics to cope with the liturgy in Latin, so I wonder what strategies the Hierarchy has in mind to enable them to do so.

At the time of Summorum Pontificum Pope Benedict expressed the hope that the two forms of the Roman Rite would come to "learn from each other". I would like to know how it is planned to take this cross-fertilisation process forward in England and Wales.

The English and Welsh bishops have a stated view (from 1966) on the position of Latin in the post-conciliar Church: "Every encouragement should be given to reciting or saying the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin ... definite steps must be taken to see that knowledge of the Latin Mass is not lost... The use of Latin will be encouraged in the new Mass as it has been in the old; Latin expresses the nature of the Church as international and timeless."

How do our current bishops prosecute this agenda?

Peter Mahoney

Rosary Crusade of Reparation, October 8th

“You have seen Hell where the Souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the World Devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say is done, many Souls will be saved and there will be peace.” Our Lady’s Words to Lucia 13th July 1917

The 27th Annual National Rosary Crusade of Reparation
Saturday 8th October 2011
Assemble by 1.45 pm outside Westminster Cathedral (Ambrosden Avenue)
Nearest Underground: Victoria
Procession to Brompton Oratory, Brompton Road, London, SW7
Nearest Underground : South Kensington

Led by:
The Rt. Revd. Monsignor
Keith Newton
Protonotary Apostolic
and Ordinary of
The Ordinariate of
Our Lady of Walsingham

Procession with the statue of Our Lady of Fatima to Brompton Oratory praying the Rosary en-route

Consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary

Scapular Enrolment

Solemn Benediction

End about 5.00 pm (Anticipated Mass of Sunday at 6.00 pm)

Spiritual Director: the Revd. Ronald Creighton-Jobe, Cong. Orat.

For Information Contact:
Francis Carey (01494) 729223 — Mathias Menezes (020) 8764 0262 or 07950 384515

or by post: 27 First Avenue, Amersham, Bucks., HP7 9BL

Web: www.rosarycrusadeofreparation.blogspot.com

Public Procession of Reparation for Sins Committed Against The Immaculate Heart

Our Lady of Walsingham and the doves

I am catching up with the blogs (having been away from proper internet access for a while) and I don't want to let this post by the Reluctant Sinner to pass without comment, since it relates to Walsingham, to which I've been on pilgrimage recently myself.

It seems that, in a remarkable parallel to events surrounding the crowning of the shrine image of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, when the shrine image of Our Lady of Walsingham was crowned in 1954 two white doves settled on the statue and remained perched there for its journey from the site of the Holy House and Abbey in Walsingham to its permanent home in the Slipper Chapel. It was captured by Pathe News on film.

This is not a very big miracle; we might call it a consolation. If we take it seriously at all it is a mark of divine favour, certainly not one of dogmatic authority but there it is, for each person to judge as he sees fit. I think it is interesting not only as an endorsement of the restored cultus and shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham but in connection with the coronation of the statue itself, undertaken by special mandate of the Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, on the Marian Year he had declared. The involvement of Popes and of our own bishops in approving, commending, and honouring shrines is something of great importance; it is not an irrelevant rigmarole. We don't make our own religion, it is in union with our bishops and the Pope and in continuity with past generations.

Other officially crowned statues of Our Lady I have seen include the statue of Our Lady of Consolation at West Grinstead in Sussex, which I think was the first such statue in England, Our Lady of Caversham outside Reading and of Our Lady of Willesden in London. There are Latin Mass Society pilgrimages to each of these; the one to Willesden is coming up (29th October). It would be good to see a list of officially approved shrines in the Catholic Directory; there seems to be no published list of them.

Eat yer heart out Fr Z!

I eat this breakfast twice a year: on my outward and return journeys to where I go on holiday.

So look out, world! I'm coming back.


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Una Voce International: Four New Members

A very encouraging press release from FIUV, the International Federation Una Voce.

28 Sep 2011
The International Federation Una Voce Welcomes Four New Members.

The International Federation Una Voce is pleased to announce the admission of four new members. The Federation Council has approved applications from:

Una Voce Albaruthenia (Belarus),
Una Voce Natal (Brazil),
Una Voce Cuba,
Una Voce Ucraina (Ukraine).

Since the promulgation of the motu prorio Summorum Pontificum in July 2007 the Federation has admitted twelve new associations: from Malta, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Chile - Casablanca, Philippines, Japan, Portugal, and now the four associations named above. We are also in active discussions with another five groups in Latin America and two in Asia. What is especially encouraging is that all these groups are being formed and led by energetic young people who have found in the traditional liturgy a spirituality they have not been able to find elsewhere. This is our hope for the future in that young lay people will be working with young clergy and religious to ensure that the traditions of the Church will be preserved and fostered.

The first President of the International Federation Una Voce, Dr Eric de Saventhem, speaking in New York in June 1970, said that the suppression of the traditional Mass had been achieved de facto only and not de jure. It would be unthinkable, he said, for the older form of Mass to be forbidden as one would have to argue that it had been wrong or bad - either doctrinally or pastorally. He thought it perfectly legitimate to ask that the new Ordo Missae should be offered as an additional, alternative way, of celebrating Mass. This was an argument that all the leaders of the International Federation have used regularly when in Rome. The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum has confirmed what Dr de Saventhem said nearly forty years earlier. In his talk he also said:

"A renaissance will come: asceticism and adoration as the mainspring of direct total dedication to Christ will return. Confraternities of priests, vowed to celibacy and to an intense life of prayer and meditation will be formed. Religious will regroup themselves into houses of "strict observance." A new form of "Liturgical Movement" will come into being, led by young priests and attracting mainly young people, in protest against the flat, prosaic, philistine or delirious liturgies which will soon overgrow and finally smother even the recently revised rites.

It is vitally important that these new priests and religious, these new young people with ardent hearts, should find -- if only in a corner of the rambling mansion of the Church -- the treasure of a truly sacred liturgy still glowing softly in the night. And it is our task - since we have been given the grace to appreciate the value of this heritage -- to preserve it from spoliation, from becoming buried out of sight, despised and therefore lost forever. It is our duty to keep it alive: by our own loving attachment, by our support for the priests who make it shine in our churches, by our apostolate at all levels of persuasion."

Everything that Dr de Saventhem prophesied has come to pass. The revised rite of 1970 has indeed been overgrown and smothered by flat and delirious liturgies. For forty years the members of the International Federation have worked unceasingly to keep alive "the truly sacred liturgy" and to prevent it being "buried out of sight, despised, and therefore lost forever". The enquiries being received by the Federation are coming mainly from young people who are not attracted or inspired by these "flat, prosaic, philistine or delirious liturgies" and are welcoming and embracing the venerable usus antiquior of their forefathers. The International Federation Una Voce will continue unceasingly in its work to attract new members and help restore and spread the usus antiquior and the venerable and ancient liturgy of our forbears to our altars.

Leo Darroch, President - Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce.

28th September 2011.



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'Firmly I Believe and Truly' Ed Fr John Saward et al

Last night was the book launch of 'Firmly I Believe and Truly' edited by Fr John Saward, John Morrill, and Michael Tomko. Fr Saward is familiar to readers of this blog as a great friend of Tradition in Oxford; his small parish church of SS Gregory & Augustine in North Oxford sees a great many traditional Masses, many of them sung. He is the author of many books, and the translator of the English edition of Pope Benedict's The Spirit of the Liturgy.

This new book is an anthology of English Catholic writers, and it sounds fascinating. It demonstrates the continuity, breadth and depth of English Catholicism, and the absurdity of the idea that Catholicism is somehow foreign to England, or not English enough ever to be the religion of this nation once more, as it was for a millenium.

I paste in below some of the publisher's blurb; HERE is where to buy it: at a discount!

'Firmly I Believe and Truly'

• Brings together a diverse array of writers from the last five hundred years to celebrate the English Roman Catholic tradition
• Includes authors who maintain a high profile today and reintroduces key figures whose writings have recently been neglected
• Provides authoritative introductions to each author
• Chronologically ordered with a clear three part structure to aid navigation
• Thoughtfully illustrated with images relevant to each part of the anthology

An Anthology of Writings from 1483 to 1999

Firmly I Believe and Truly celebrates the depth and breadth of the spiritual, literary, and intellectual heritage of the Post-Reformation English Roman Catholic tradition in an anthology of writings that span a five hundred year period between William Caxton and Cardinal Hume. Intended as a rich resource for all with an interest in Roman Catholicism, the writings have been carefully selected and edited by a team of scholars with historical, theological, and literary expertise. Each author is introduced to provide context for the included extracts and the chronological arrangement of the anthology makes the volume easy to use whilst creating a fascinating overview of the modern era in English Catholic thought. The extracts comprise a wide variety writing genres; sermons, prayers, poetry, diaries, novels, theology, apologetics, works of controversy, devotional literature, biographies, drama, and essays. Includes writings by:
John Colet, John Fisher, Thomas More, Robert Southwell, Philip Howard, Anne Askew, Edmund Campion, John Gother, John Dryden, Mary Barker, Alexander Pope, Richard Challoner, Alban Butler, John Milner, Elizabeth Inchbald, Nicholas Wiseman, Margaret Mary Hallahan, A. W. N. Pugin, John Henry Newman, Henry Edward Manning, Frederick William Faber, Bertrand Wilberforce, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Vincent McNabb, Hilaire Belloc, Maurice Baring, G. K. Chesterton, R. A. Knox, J. R. R. Tolkien, Caryll Houselander, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, John Bradburne, Cardinal Hume

Readership: People of all Christian traditions who want to gain a deeper understanding of the roots of the Catholic faith and heritage. Scholars in the fields of theology, history, and literature.

Shameless plug for the 'Roman Forum'

If you don't know the Roman Forum, then you should find out about them, listen to their downloadable MP3s and, if possible, attend their events. I am envious of the intellectual activity they have been able to generate; I wish we could do some of this here in the UK. I admire Dr Rao and his work enormously.

Here is a plug for their new season's activities, and an appeal for funds, from Dr Rao himself.

---------------------------------

The Roman Forum
11 Carmine St., Apt. 2C
New York, New York 10014
www.romanforum.org

September, 2011


Dear Friends:

The Sack of Rome! Most people think of this in conjunction with barbarian invasions, although the worst assault on the Eternal City actually took place in the Sixteenth Century, when commanders of a “Christian” army justified their soldiers murdering, burning, and plundering the capital of Christendom as divine chastisement for the sins of the Papacy. Despite this horror, it still required a number of years, many more setbacks, and the election of another successor to St. Peter, Paul III, before the Church awoke from her “dogmatic slumbers” to pursue the magnificent work of the Tridentine Reform in earnest. She did this not by choosing “Pope Luther”, as the troops punishing Clement VII in 1527 demanded, but by going back to the sources of the Faith. In returning to Tradition, she also created something new as well: Baroque
Civilization.

The Sack of the final remnants of Christian Civilization in all its forms! That is what we are witnessing in our own time. Although we already have a Pontiff eager to stem such destruction, there are many obstacles, inside and outside the Church, making any progress in doing so ephemeral. Why? One major reason is because we believers are not yet plumbing the fullness of the Catholic Tradition for the answers to dilemmas that could lead to the creation of a fresh Christian Culture. Instead, we continue to listen to liberal, conservative, neo-conservative, and libertarian teachers, providing them soldiers for the Sack of Christian Civilization in the process. The Roman Forum’s mission is that of urging Catholics to flee ideology and open their minds to a return to the complete Christian Tradition; a Tradition that also provides a reliable road map through new, unchartered territory; a road map “back to the future”. How does it fulfill this task?

1) First of all, through our New York City Church History Lectures.

2) Through our Modern Image and Catholic Truth Series.

3) Through our Summer Symposium on Lake Garda, Italy. For two weeks in the summer, a small Italian resort, Gardone Riviera, on Lake Garda, the largest and most beautiful lake in Italy, is literally transformed into an international Catholic village, with daily traditional masses, lectures, camaraderie, superb food and wine, and day trips to surrounding sites, such as Venice and Trent. For participants, many of whom come back year after year and feel like family, it is a rare and wonderful opportunity to experience Catholic life on the continent where Catholic culture first fully came to flower. The Summer Symposium hosts a large international faculty, which has included Dale Ahlquist (G.K. Chesterton Society of America), Patrick Brennan (U. of Villanova), Christopher Ferrara (American Catholic Lawyers Association), Fr. Brian Harrison (Catholic U. of Puerto Rico, Emeritus), James Kalb (author of The Tyranny of Liberalism), Michael Matt (editor of The Remnant), Brian McCall (U. of Oklahoma), John Médaille (U. of Dallas), Fr. Richard Munkelt (Fairfield U.), Fr. Gregory Prendergraft (FSSP), Duncan Stroik (Notre Dame U.), Alice von Hildebrand (Hunter College, Emeritus), David White (US Naval Academy, Emeritus), and myself from the United States; Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro-Carámbula (Human Life International, Rome) and Danilo Castellano (U. of Udine) from Italy; James Bogle (Catholic lawyer, activist, and writer) from the United Kingdom; Miguel Ayuso-Torres (U. of Madrid) from Spain; Thomas Stark (Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule, St. Pölten), from Austria; David Berlinski (Discovery Institute) and Bernard Dumont (editor of Catholica) from France; and Taivo Niitvaagi (Hereditas Foundation) from Estonia. The late, prolific, traditionalist author Michael Davies, from the UK, and my predecessor as chairman of the Roman Forum, the late William Marra (Fordham U.), were honored speakers for many years. Faculty and students are served spiritually by a large number of secular and religious clergy.

Next year’s Summer Symposium will be a particularly splendid one, marking our twentieth anniversary in Gardone Riviera. Having completed our cycle of historical studies, we will begin our activities in mid-June with a Tour of Greece, the main secular font of Western Civilization. We will then sail to Venice. After several days in Venice, we will move to Gardone at the end of June and early July for our eleven-day academic program. Gardone, 2012, entitled Either
Catholic Political and Social Doctrine---Or the Sack of All Civilized Order, obviously takes its theme from the situation discussed at the beginning of this letter. Please consult our website
(www.romanforum.org) and that of The Remnant Newspaper (www.remnantnewspaper.com) for more complete information on the Greece and Venice Tour, the 2012 Summer Symposium, as well as other future events, like our annual New Year’s Eve Dinner Dance.

4) Through our Lecture Downloads. 2010-2011 Summer Symposium Lectures are available through The Remnant Newspaper. Almost all of the lectures of our History of Christianity program from 1993-2010 can be downloaded to your computer for only one dollar per lecture or purchased on audiotape at www.keepthefaith.org.

In order to undertake these projects properly, the Roman Forum needs an annual budget of $50,000. Where do these funds go? Mailings, advertising, books, storage space for them, and use of conference halls alone now cost us at least $15,000 per year. More importantly, most college students, priests, and seminarians hoping to attend the Summer Symposium cannot be present without some financial assistance. Although no one on the teaching faculty receives any compensation for his work there, the daily expenses of all those delivering papers in Gardone
must also be covered. Aiding both speakers and participants therefore takes up almost all of the rest of our annual budget.

But why should we place such an emphasis upon this Summer Symposium? Dr. Ayuso-Torres summarized the chief reason in a lecture in Gardone in 2008: “Unless we traditionalists learn to appreciate the universal nature of the Catholic vision and fight for its general recognition and
victory, we will all rest contented with our own little parochial piece of that heritage, and destroy the entirety in the process”. My Remnant article on this subject, entitled Are Beauty, Camaraderie, and Talk Really Expendable? (see jcrao.freeshell.org) underlines the same point.
Providing scholarships for such a program to priests, professors, and students can be expensive---but its incalculable fruits will be more and more seen in preaching, teaching, and writing in the years to come.

The Roman Forum may not be able to promise immediate political benefits, but we work with the conviction that what we are doing is being done to good long-term and lasting spiritual and educational effect. To show you our appreciation, we have arranged that the intentions of our benefactors be remembered once a month at a traditional Mass offered in Rome by our chaplain, Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro-Carámbula. With the acknowledgment of your donation, of any size, you will receive a note confirming that you have been enrolled in these Masses. I thank you in advance for your generosity.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

John C. Rao, Chairman, D. Phil. Oxford
Assoc. Prof. of History, St. John's University