From the Birmingham Post (click here for bigger)
It's been just over 750 days since three "entirely guiltless of any wrong-doing whatsoever" members of the Birmingham Oratory were "ordered to go on retreat". We were told it was "just a time away to cool down" and they would "come back soon" though that turned out not to be the case.
The Birmingham Oratory is a dead parrot. It is deceased. It is no more. Yes, of course, there is still a big building in Birmingham with a sign outside saying "Oratory" but it is in no meaningful sense an Oratory. You see, each Oratory is an independent community which elects it's own provost from among it's own members. The Birmingham Oratory is not independent, it is ruled from afar and it's community has been scattered across the continents.
My advice to the puppeteers in London and Cardiff is this: We would all find it a lot easier to believe that the whole "Birmingham Three" thing was entirely above board, if you could perhaps refrain from unfairly dismissing your lay staff.
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Payout in Birmingham Oratory Job Fight
Catholic & loving it! blog - 9.6.2012
(link)
Here we go again...
From the Birmingham Post (click here for bigger)
It's been just over 750 days since three "entirely guiltless of any wrong-doing whatsoever" members of the Birmingham Oratory were "ordered to go on retreat". We were told it was "just a time away to cool down" and they would "come back soon" though that turned out not to be the case.
The Birmingham Oratory is a dead parrot. It is deceased. It is no more. Yes, of course, there is still a big building in Birmingham with a sign outside saying "Oratory" but it is in no meaningful sense an Oratory. You see, each Oratory is an independent community which elects it's own provost from among it's own members. The Birmingham Oratory is not independent, it is ruled from afar and it's community has been scattered across the continents.
My advice to the puppeteers in London and Cardiff is this: We would all find it a lot easier to believe that the whole "Birmingham Three" thing was entirely above board, if you could perhaps refrain from unfairly dismissing your lay staff.
From the Birmingham Post (click here for bigger)
It's been just over 750 days since three "entirely guiltless of any wrong-doing whatsoever" members of the Birmingham Oratory were "ordered to go on retreat". We were told it was "just a time away to cool down" and they would "come back soon" though that turned out not to be the case.
The Birmingham Oratory is a dead parrot. It is deceased. It is no more. Yes, of course, there is still a big building in Birmingham with a sign outside saying "Oratory" but it is in no meaningful sense an Oratory. You see, each Oratory is an independent community which elects it's own provost from among it's own members. The Birmingham Oratory is not independent, it is ruled from afar and it's community has been scattered across the continents.
My advice to the puppeteers in London and Cardiff is this: We would all find it a lot easier to believe that the whole "Birmingham Three" thing was entirely above board, if you could perhaps refrain from unfairly dismissing your lay staff.
Saturday, 25 February 2012
The great family of Father Philip
24 February 2012
L’Osservatore Romano (link)
Four hundred years ago, on 24 February 1612, with the Brief Christifidelium Quorumlibet Pope Paul V approved the Constitutions of the Congregation of The Oratory. The Oratory was the first, in chronological order, of those institutions which the Code of Canon Law in force today calls “Societies of Apostolic Life”. There are currently 34 such in existence, counting only those of pontifical right.
Gregory XIII canonically recognized it in 1575, the first Holy Year celebrated after the conclusion of the Council of Trent, but it had in fact existed since 1564, when the first followers of St Philip Neri, who had trained in The Oratory, were ordained priests and sent by Neri to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini: indeed in that year the Florentine community in the City had chosen to entrust their parish to Fr Philip.
Ordained on 23 May 1551 and the founder of the movement which took the name “Oratory”, he accepted unwillingly, out of obedience to authoritative instructions. However, he who in the residential college of priests at San Girolamo, who received stipends from the Confraternity of Charity to care for the church, had not felt that the parish apostolate was consonant with his spirit and the special vocation that motivated him, and had even given up his stipend in order to serve with total dedication but with the freedom to decide on his own forms of apostolate.
A few years later, in the middle of the Jubilee Year of 1575, Gregory XIII's Bull Copiosus in Misericordia assigned to “Philip Neri, a Florentine priest and the superior of several priests and seminarians”, the parish church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, at the same time setting up “a secular Congregation of Priests and Seminarians called “The Oratory”, with the mandate to “formulate honest Statutes and Regulations that do not contradict the sacred canons and the provisions of the Council of Trent”.
The compilation of the Constitutions was slow and was not an easy undertaking. The drafting of the Constitutional text began at the end of 1583; the Compendium Constitutionum Congregationis Oratorii which constituted the base for that larger and more organic edition of 1588, guaranteed, not only by the approval of the whole Congregation, by the authority of Fr Philip who, for the 1583 text had limited himself to a few instructions. The centralized structure of the Oratorian Houses which had come into being in the meantime corresponded with the intentions of Talpa, Tarugi, Bordini, Baronio and others, rather than with the inmost conviction of the Father; but he accepted the idea of his sons. With the prevalence, especially after the death of Fr Philip, of the line of fidelity to the founder's original intention, this juridical link of the houses was to disappear. The 1612 Constitutions were to be formulated with the clear intention, expressed by Fr Consolini, to include only “what had been bequeathed by him [Philip Neri] and which he had observed for so many years in his lifetime”.
The “path” the founder had marked out was already expressed in summary form in the preface to these Constitutions: “The holy Father Philip”, they read, “would direct with paternal inspiration the spirit and will of each one of his sons, in accordance with the temperament of each, considering himself satisfied to see them fired by piety and fervent in the love of Christ. Only gradually and with gentle tact (opedetemptim et suaviter) did he continue to test and to ascertain as a manifestation of the Lord's will what, by daily experience, was congenial and useful to them, day after day, in the achievement of holiness. And he would say persuasively that this kind of life really was especially suited to secular priests and lay people, and was in conformity with the divine will”.
It was a community of priests, therefore, totally dedicated to Christ in the exercise of their ministry, a family life based on attention and respect for the individual, whose specific temperament is a value to strengthen in goodness and in the light of the Spirit, to form in a responsible attitude of authentic freedom which not only is not opposed to the common progress, but also becomes a wealth within the community; an orderly family of priests, not bound by religious vows but living the spirit of vows in a secularism that we may describe as a mental disposition to perceiving the restlessness of men and women, being in the world to proclaim the Gospel without extraneousness or mortifying forms of paternalism.
Edoardo Aldo Cerrato
L’Osservatore Romano (link)
Four hundred years ago, on 24 February 1612, with the Brief Christifidelium Quorumlibet Pope Paul V approved the Constitutions of the Congregation of The Oratory. The Oratory was the first, in chronological order, of those institutions which the Code of Canon Law in force today calls “Societies of Apostolic Life”. There are currently 34 such in existence, counting only those of pontifical right.
Gregory XIII canonically recognized it in 1575, the first Holy Year celebrated after the conclusion of the Council of Trent, but it had in fact existed since 1564, when the first followers of St Philip Neri, who had trained in The Oratory, were ordained priests and sent by Neri to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini: indeed in that year the Florentine community in the City had chosen to entrust their parish to Fr Philip.
Ordained on 23 May 1551 and the founder of the movement which took the name “Oratory”, he accepted unwillingly, out of obedience to authoritative instructions. However, he who in the residential college of priests at San Girolamo, who received stipends from the Confraternity of Charity to care for the church, had not felt that the parish apostolate was consonant with his spirit and the special vocation that motivated him, and had even given up his stipend in order to serve with total dedication but with the freedom to decide on his own forms of apostolate.
A few years later, in the middle of the Jubilee Year of 1575, Gregory XIII's Bull Copiosus in Misericordia assigned to “Philip Neri, a Florentine priest and the superior of several priests and seminarians”, the parish church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, at the same time setting up “a secular Congregation of Priests and Seminarians called “The Oratory”, with the mandate to “formulate honest Statutes and Regulations that do not contradict the sacred canons and the provisions of the Council of Trent”.
The compilation of the Constitutions was slow and was not an easy undertaking. The drafting of the Constitutional text began at the end of 1583; the Compendium Constitutionum Congregationis Oratorii which constituted the base for that larger and more organic edition of 1588, guaranteed, not only by the approval of the whole Congregation, by the authority of Fr Philip who, for the 1583 text had limited himself to a few instructions. The centralized structure of the Oratorian Houses which had come into being in the meantime corresponded with the intentions of Talpa, Tarugi, Bordini, Baronio and others, rather than with the inmost conviction of the Father; but he accepted the idea of his sons. With the prevalence, especially after the death of Fr Philip, of the line of fidelity to the founder's original intention, this juridical link of the houses was to disappear. The 1612 Constitutions were to be formulated with the clear intention, expressed by Fr Consolini, to include only “what had been bequeathed by him [Philip Neri] and which he had observed for so many years in his lifetime”.
The “path” the founder had marked out was already expressed in summary form in the preface to these Constitutions: “The holy Father Philip”, they read, “would direct with paternal inspiration the spirit and will of each one of his sons, in accordance with the temperament of each, considering himself satisfied to see them fired by piety and fervent in the love of Christ. Only gradually and with gentle tact (opedetemptim et suaviter) did he continue to test and to ascertain as a manifestation of the Lord's will what, by daily experience, was congenial and useful to them, day after day, in the achievement of holiness. And he would say persuasively that this kind of life really was especially suited to secular priests and lay people, and was in conformity with the divine will”.
It was a community of priests, therefore, totally dedicated to Christ in the exercise of their ministry, a family life based on attention and respect for the individual, whose specific temperament is a value to strengthen in goodness and in the light of the Spirit, to form in a responsible attitude of authentic freedom which not only is not opposed to the common progress, but also becomes a wealth within the community; an orderly family of priests, not bound by religious vows but living the spirit of vows in a secularism that we may describe as a mental disposition to perceiving the restlessness of men and women, being in the world to proclaim the Gospel without extraneousness or mortifying forms of paternalism.
Edoardo Aldo Cerrato
400th anniversary of Oratorian constitutions
www.catholicculture.org (link)
February 24, 2012
L’Osservatore Romano has published an essay commemorating the 400th anniversary of Pope Paul V’s approval of the constitutions of the Congregation of the Oratory, the society of apostolic life founded by St. Philip Neri. There are now 568 Oratorians worldwide, according to Vatican statistics.
“The holy Father Philip would direct with paternal inspiration the spirit and will of each one of his sons, in accordance with the temperament of each, considering himself satisfied to see them fired by piety and fervent in the love of Christ,” the constitutions state. “Only gradually and with gentle tact did he continue to test and to ascertain as a manifestation of the Lord's will what, by daily experience, was congenial and useful to them, day after day, in the achievement of holiness. And he would say persuasively that this kind of life really was especially suited to secular priests and lay people, and was in conformity with the divine will.”
February 24, 2012
L’Osservatore Romano has published an essay commemorating the 400th anniversary of Pope Paul V’s approval of the constitutions of the Congregation of the Oratory, the society of apostolic life founded by St. Philip Neri. There are now 568 Oratorians worldwide, according to Vatican statistics.
“The holy Father Philip would direct with paternal inspiration the spirit and will of each one of his sons, in accordance with the temperament of each, considering himself satisfied to see them fired by piety and fervent in the love of Christ,” the constitutions state. “Only gradually and with gentle tact did he continue to test and to ascertain as a manifestation of the Lord's will what, by daily experience, was congenial and useful to them, day after day, in the achievement of holiness. And he would say persuasively that this kind of life really was especially suited to secular priests and lay people, and was in conformity with the divine will.”
Friday, 3 February 2012
Requiem Mass for Fr Gregory Winterton at the Birmingham Oratory
Free the B3: Justice for Fr. Dermot Fenlon has had several reliable reports that Fr. Dermot was allowed to attend the Reception of the Body and the Requiem Mass for his friend and brother Oratorian, Fr Gregory Winterton at the Birmingham Oratory on 23 and 24 January 2012.
(link)
Picture by Peter Jennings
(link)
Picture by Peter Jennings
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Frather Gregory Winterton +
FATHER GREGORY WINTERTON +
(link)
Fr Gregory died peacefully at St Joseph’s Home, Harborne, on Wednesday January 18th. He was 89 years old, and had been a member of the Oratory Community for nearly fifty one years and a priest for nearly forty nine years.
According to a very old custom, no sermon or panegyric is given at the Requiem Mass of a Father of the Oratory, so we take this opportunity to record a few facts and memories of Father Gregory.
Cecil John Winterton—he took the name Gregory on coming to the Oratory—was born in Brighton, Sussex on July 9th 1922, the oldest son of the future Major-General Sir John Winterton and his wife Helen, née Shepherd-Cross. He was at school at Selwyn House, Broadstairs (1932-35) and Wellington College, Berks (1935-40). Leaving school in the early days of the Second World War, he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery and saw service in North Africa, Italy and Palestine. He acted as his father’s ADC when General Winterton was Allied Commander-in-Chief in Austria, and Military Governor of the Anglo-American Zone in Trieste. In 1946 John Winterton went to St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, where he read theology. During his time in Italy he had visited the Shrine of St Francis of Assisi and there discovered his vocation to the ministry. Accepted for training by the Bishop of London, he studied for ordination at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, and was ordained an Anglican priest in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, in September 1951. He served as a curate in Northolt, and in 1954 came to Wolverhampton as priest-in-charge of St George’s Church. However, he resigned on January 1st 1955 and was received into the Catholic Church on Maundy Thursday that year. In his early days as a Catholic, John Winterton first visited the Oratory, but it was not until 1961, when he had already been a student for the Archdiocese of Birmingham for five years, that he joined the Oratory Congregation. Fr Gregory was ordained priest in our church on March 9th 1963.
In his early years as a priest, Fr Gregory taught in our Grammar School, St Philip’s, and many still fondly remember him from those years as “Pop G”. Later on he served as a Governor of the School and its successor, the Sixth Form College. He was also a Governor of the Oratory School near Reading, originally founded by Blessed John Henry Newman in 1859. He served as Provost of the Oratory from 1971 until 1992 apart from six months in 1977, when Fr Geoffrey Wamsley occupied the position until his sudden death in July that year.
There are two areas of his life at the Oratory for which Fr Gregory will be long remembered: Firstly, for his work as Parish Priest. For many years Fr Gregory was a familiar figure riding his old bicycle through the streets of Ladywood and Edgbaston. When poor eyesight meant he could no longer use his bicycle, his fast, military style of walking became equally familiar. He was assiduous in visiting the sick and housebound; spent long hours in his confessional; prepared engaged countless couples for marriage and converts for reception into the Church. He loved (like St Philip) the youth, and was a keen supporter and Chaplain of the Legion of Mary. Until well into old age he was a regular pilgrim to Lourdes and attended Oratorian reunions in Rome, Spain and Mexico. His acts of kindness and generosity (often of a financial nature!) were both legion and legendary.
The second great area of his work concerned the Cause for Cardinal Newman’s canonisation. Opened in 1958, the Cause had not made much progess apart from the publication, at regular intervals, of Newman’s vast ‘Letters and Diaries’.
In 1973, Pope Paul VI enquired whether it would be possible to beatify Newman during the course of the 1975 Holy Year. Of course things were nowhere near ready but, galvanised by Papal interest, Fr Gregory devoted increasing amounts of time to furthering the matter. Founding ‘The Friends of Cardinal Newman’ in 1976, giving talks and lectures to deepen knowledge and love of the Cardinal, producing pamphlets and prayerbooks, his work proved successful and interest grew year by year. Combined with the work of Fr Vincent Blehl as Postulator, significant developments occurred, a particular milestone being the Declaration by Pope John Paul II of Newman’s heroic virtues in 1991. After that another eighteen years elapsed before Cardinal Newman’s beatification at the unforgettable Mass at Cofton Park on September 19th 2010. The moment when Fr Gregory was presented to Pope Benedict XVI and, later that same day, when they met at the Oratory House, provided unforgettable pictures: two men in their eighties—one (the Pope) a devoted student of Newman, the other (Fr Gregory) the tireless advocate of Newman’s holiness. It was the culmination of half a life-time’s hard work for Fr Gregory.
At the end of his long life, dedicated to God as a faithful priest and son of St Philip, we pray for Fr Gregory in the words of the Church’s liturgy: “Lord, you gave Gregory, Your servant and priest, the privilege of a holy ministry in this world. May he rejoice for ever in the glory of Your Kingdom, through Christ Our Lord. Amen”
(link)
Fr Gregory died peacefully at St Joseph’s Home, Harborne, on Wednesday January 18th. He was 89 years old, and had been a member of the Oratory Community for nearly fifty one years and a priest for nearly forty nine years.
According to a very old custom, no sermon or panegyric is given at the Requiem Mass of a Father of the Oratory, so we take this opportunity to record a few facts and memories of Father Gregory.
Cecil John Winterton—he took the name Gregory on coming to the Oratory—was born in Brighton, Sussex on July 9th 1922, the oldest son of the future Major-General Sir John Winterton and his wife Helen, née Shepherd-Cross. He was at school at Selwyn House, Broadstairs (1932-35) and Wellington College, Berks (1935-40). Leaving school in the early days of the Second World War, he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery and saw service in North Africa, Italy and Palestine. He acted as his father’s ADC when General Winterton was Allied Commander-in-Chief in Austria, and Military Governor of the Anglo-American Zone in Trieste. In 1946 John Winterton went to St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, where he read theology. During his time in Italy he had visited the Shrine of St Francis of Assisi and there discovered his vocation to the ministry. Accepted for training by the Bishop of London, he studied for ordination at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, and was ordained an Anglican priest in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, in September 1951. He served as a curate in Northolt, and in 1954 came to Wolverhampton as priest-in-charge of St George’s Church. However, he resigned on January 1st 1955 and was received into the Catholic Church on Maundy Thursday that year. In his early days as a Catholic, John Winterton first visited the Oratory, but it was not until 1961, when he had already been a student for the Archdiocese of Birmingham for five years, that he joined the Oratory Congregation. Fr Gregory was ordained priest in our church on March 9th 1963.
In his early years as a priest, Fr Gregory taught in our Grammar School, St Philip’s, and many still fondly remember him from those years as “Pop G”. Later on he served as a Governor of the School and its successor, the Sixth Form College. He was also a Governor of the Oratory School near Reading, originally founded by Blessed John Henry Newman in 1859. He served as Provost of the Oratory from 1971 until 1992 apart from six months in 1977, when Fr Geoffrey Wamsley occupied the position until his sudden death in July that year.
There are two areas of his life at the Oratory for which Fr Gregory will be long remembered: Firstly, for his work as Parish Priest. For many years Fr Gregory was a familiar figure riding his old bicycle through the streets of Ladywood and Edgbaston. When poor eyesight meant he could no longer use his bicycle, his fast, military style of walking became equally familiar. He was assiduous in visiting the sick and housebound; spent long hours in his confessional; prepared engaged countless couples for marriage and converts for reception into the Church. He loved (like St Philip) the youth, and was a keen supporter and Chaplain of the Legion of Mary. Until well into old age he was a regular pilgrim to Lourdes and attended Oratorian reunions in Rome, Spain and Mexico. His acts of kindness and generosity (often of a financial nature!) were both legion and legendary.
The second great area of his work concerned the Cause for Cardinal Newman’s canonisation. Opened in 1958, the Cause had not made much progess apart from the publication, at regular intervals, of Newman’s vast ‘Letters and Diaries’.
In 1973, Pope Paul VI enquired whether it would be possible to beatify Newman during the course of the 1975 Holy Year. Of course things were nowhere near ready but, galvanised by Papal interest, Fr Gregory devoted increasing amounts of time to furthering the matter. Founding ‘The Friends of Cardinal Newman’ in 1976, giving talks and lectures to deepen knowledge and love of the Cardinal, producing pamphlets and prayerbooks, his work proved successful and interest grew year by year. Combined with the work of Fr Vincent Blehl as Postulator, significant developments occurred, a particular milestone being the Declaration by Pope John Paul II of Newman’s heroic virtues in 1991. After that another eighteen years elapsed before Cardinal Newman’s beatification at the unforgettable Mass at Cofton Park on September 19th 2010. The moment when Fr Gregory was presented to Pope Benedict XVI and, later that same day, when they met at the Oratory House, provided unforgettable pictures: two men in their eighties—one (the Pope) a devoted student of Newman, the other (Fr Gregory) the tireless advocate of Newman’s holiness. It was the culmination of half a life-time’s hard work for Fr Gregory.
At the end of his long life, dedicated to God as a faithful priest and son of St Philip, we pray for Fr Gregory in the words of the Church’s liturgy: “Lord, you gave Gregory, Your servant and priest, the privilege of a holy ministry in this world. May he rejoice for ever in the glory of Your Kingdom, through Christ Our Lord. Amen”
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Fr Gregory Winterton, rest in peace
Of Your Charity, pray for the repose of the Soul of Fr Gregory Winterton,
priest of the Birmingham Oratory who died on the morning of 18th January
(link)
priest of the Birmingham Oratory who died on the morning of 18th January
(link)
Sunday, 4 December 2011
Fr Dermot Fenlon's 70th Birthday
Today is Fr Dermot Fenlon's 70th birthday.
It is also the 570th day since he was sent away from his home at the Birmingham Oratory.
Fr Dermot, wherever you are we wish you a very happy 70th birthday.
Please be assured of our prayers.
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