Don't do your online Christmas shopping till you've read this

It came as a surprise to me, and may be to you too, that you can support your favourite charity when shopping online in a very simple way without any cost to you.

There are two ways of doing this; they are explained in the latest edition of Mass of Ages. In case you've not got your copy (no?), here a summary.

One is called 'easyfundraising'. If you visit your usual online retailers through the easyfundraising site, or using the easyfundraising app, having told easyfundraising which charity you wish to support, a great many of them will make a small donation to your charity if you buy something.

Just visit the easyfundraising site and all will be explained. The donations vary in size; some are fixed sums, some are percentages. It's not much but it adds up. If thousands of UK Catholics consistently did their shopping this way in favour of the Latin Mass Society or Aid to the Church in Need, it would raise a very real sum of money.

Explaining and defeating Political Correctness' spiral of lunacy

My latest on LifeSite News. A key passage:

One might expect a movement to correct injustices to enjoy the most support when addressing the worst injustices, and falling levels of support as the injustices in view are less and less indisputable. While a movement will gain credibility and momentum by early successes, increasingly extreme demands will, usually, harden opposition to it, and put potential supporters off. For this reason, many successful political movements never quite complete their agendas: they eventually run out of steam.

This has not happened with PC. Demands routinely made today would shock even the most avid supporter 10 years ago. Implications of PC causes which are ridiculed as scare-mongering one year are then embraced the next: an example would be the promotion of polygamy following the legal enforcement of same-sex “marriage.” (2015: Oh no, it won’t happen; 2017: Oh yes, it just has.)

As Kristian Niemietz of the UK think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs explains, the key to understanding the movement is the elevated moral status enjoyed by those who embrace it. Being PC or progressive is not about having a reasonable disagreement with university colleagues or fellow citizens: it is about being free from the ancient prejudices to which they are subject. It is about being more enlightened, more advanced, and more virtuous.

Read it all here.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Clericalism and abuse

My latest on LifeSite News.

A key passage:

The erasing of the distinction between clergy and laity does not remove the danger of the abuse of power. Priests who see themselves, or are seen by the laity, primarily as managers, and perhaps as more-or-less interchangeable with their lay assistants, rather than as men consecrated to a special sacramental role, can very easily abuse the power which their managerial status gives them. 

Even more dangerous is the substitution of personal charisma for formal clerical prerogatives, as the basis of a priest’s role in the community. It is clear enough where the role of the ordained priesthood begins and ends, what he has authority over and what he does not, what obligations he has and to whom he is responsible. A charismatic leader is not bound by any of this, and the devotion of his followers very easily opens up opportunities for abuse of all kinds. 

Read it all there.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Catholic Bishops are afraid of investigations

My latest on LifeSite News.

A taster:

In some cases, decision-makers were personally involved in wrongdoing. In other cases, it is sometimes suggested, they were being black-mailed, explicitly or implicitly. I would suggest, however, that this is another motive, which would apply even to those who had little to fear personally: simply that a real house-cleaning exercise would implicate so many people, in such seriously bad things, that the overall effect on the Church’s standing, and even its ability to function, would be catastrophic.


Read it all here.

Support the Latin Mass Society

LMS Confirmations 2018: Photos

Every year the Latin Mass Society organises confirmations in the Extraordinary Form in St James', Spanish Place, in London. They are usually conferred by an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Westminster. This year, for the third time, it was Bishop John Sherrington.




Each candidate is annointed, given the sacramental formula, and then the ritual blow on the cheek. Bishop Sherington spoke movingly about the symbolism of this blow, as showing that the confirmand must be willing to die for the Faith.

A Catholic culture? We need a culture

Me on LifeSite News. A key passage.

Up to the first half of the 20th century, western societies taught their children stories which illustrated and reinforced a particular conception of marriage and family; the same conception was supported by the civil law, by social expectations and social sanctions; and the same model was experienced by the vast majority of people. The same is true of the conception of the role of the state, the place of religion in society, gender roles, and a thousand other things. These shared understandings, which took on distinct flavors in different countries and in different cultural and ethnic groups, were the basis of a sense of solidarity.

One does not have to imagine that the culture of any particular time and place was perfect in every way, in order to realize that a society which lacks a culture in this sense is in serious trouble. But that is our situation today. The old models of how to live have not entirely gone away, but they are no longer supported by a social consensus. Our children are continually exposed to mixed messages, and civil law and social norms not only fail to support the old model, but in many ways work to undermine it. On the other hand, that model has not been replaced by a consistently applied, widely understood, and coherent, alternative.

Read it all there.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Should Catholics be free-speech absolutists?

Me on LifeSite News: a key section.

Since people on the “progressive” side of the debate generally need not fear exclusion from social media and public spaces, they usually do not need to make such appeals, so this appeal to free speech is becoming increasingly associated only with the defense of conservative voices. We now hear from liberals that the principle of free speech is being “weaponized,” a rhetorical preparation for saying that the principle should be rejected, as the latest Google memo comes close to doing.

This is quite a turn-around from the depiction of the Catholic Church as the opponent of liberty, and the historic attempts to undermine the Church’s institutions and influence by scurrilous pamphleteering: characteristic tactics of the Church’s opponents since the time of Luther. In response to this kind of activity, Popes down the ages remind us that freedom of expression is not an absolute right. Typical was Pope Pius IX, who had the Papal States to administer as well as the Universal Church, and who wrote in 1864 (Quanta cura) of “that erroneous opinion”

that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.
Read it all there.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Honouring our war dead

Me on LifeSite News. A key paragraph:

There are inevitably those who are uncomfortable with the commemoration of the war dead, the commonest complaint being that it ‘glorifies war’. This seems a curious reaction to the ritualized expression of public grief, but it contains this grain of truth: the laying of wreaths and the parading of soldiers does not merely remember the dead: it honors them. If one takes the view that all war is evil, then this is no more appropriate than publicly honoring a roll-call of mass-murderers.

Read it all there.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Catholics funerals must beseech God's mercy

Me on LifeSite News: a sample paragraph.

But the meaning of the words is only one aspect of the listener’s experience of these chants. Gregorian Chant is remarkable for expressing emotion without manipulating the hearer: it doesn’t twang on the heartstrings with euphoric or lacrimose cords, but expresses joy and sorrow in a way at once authentic, dignified, and restrained. Equally striking, with the chants for the dead, is their powerfully insistent tone, especially evident in the Dies irae. There is no need to speak at length about despair, but there is need to spend time begging God’s mercy, because God is pleased to grant it at our insistence, if we insist with a confidence that does not tip over into presumption.

Read it all there.

Support the Latin Mass Society

LMS Bedford Pilgrimage: photos

The church of St Joseph, Bedford, has one of the limited number of specially produced replica images of the famous tilma in Mexico, which have been touched to the original. You can see it above and below in the sanctuary of the church. The image regularly tours the country, but this is its home.

Newman Colloquium: with Fr Jeremy Davies, Exorcist

As last time, 3:45pm in the parish hall at SS Gregory & Augustine's in Oxford.

The booking page is here.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Witchcraft and the Occult

My latest at LifeSite News begins as follow:

Following the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court judge, an occult book shop in New York hosted his mass-“hexing”: people identifying as witches gathered to curse him. They had earlier done the same thing to President Trump. Reading such stories in reputable news sources like the BBC brings to mind G.K. Chesterton’s remark:

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.

As LifeSiteNews has reported, however, self-described witchcraft has grown to the level which is no longer simply a joke. It is important to keep three points in mind about it. First, the claims of today’s occultists and witches to some historical continuity with European paganism are completely deluded. Secondly, it is nevertheless spiritually dangerous. Thirdly, Catholicism is the form of religion it most detests, and also the form which can most help its adherents.

Read more there.

Support the Latin Mass Society

Masses for Remembrance Sunday in the UK

Mass for Remembrance Sunday at Holy Trinity Hethe inn 2015

This Sunday is Remebrance Sunday in the UK, and wherever the Traditional Mass is celebrated here it will be a Mass of Requiem. Readers should seek out a Sung Mass if possible to experience this to best effect, and unite themselves to the prayers of the Church for those who have died in war.

A few to mention - there are many more:

St Bede's, Clapham Park: as always there will be a Sung Mass at 11am

Address: 8 Thornton Rd, London SW12 0LF (click for a map)
Holy Trinity Hethe will have a Sung Mass at 12 noon this Sunday. Holy Trinity is distinguished, among other ways, by having war graves in its cemetery.

Address: Hardwick Rd, Hethe, Bicester OX27 8AW (click for a map)
St Walburge's, Preston, which is served by the Institute of Christ the King, will see a High Mass at the  special war memorial altar, at 10:30am.

Address: Weston St, Preston PR2 2QE (click for a map)

St William of York, Reading, served by the Fraternity of St Peter: Sung Mass at 11am

Address: 46 Upper Redlands Rd, Reading RG1 5JP (click for a map)

Pilgrimage to Stirling, Scotland, 30th November

Another great initiative from Scotland's traditional Catholics!

St Mary's Church, 15 Upper Bridge St, Stirling FK8 1ES (click for a map)

6:30pm Procession

7:30 High Mass

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Good Counsel Network Ball, 10th Nov

See the Facebook event page.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Mass of Reparation in Bedford: this Saturday, 12 noon

A High Mass will take place in Bedford's Shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe this Saturday at 12 noon: St Joseph's Church, MK40 1HU

This is the first LMS Pilgrimage to this shrine, which houses one of the official copies of the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.



Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Annual Requiem in Westminster Cathedral

Last Saturday the Latin Mass Society's Annual Requiem took place in Westminster Cathedral. As more than ten years not it is always, thanks to the generosity of the Archdiocese of Westminster, a Pontifical Mass. This year it was celebrated by the recently retired Bishop Patrick Campbell of Lancaster.



A special feature of interest this year was the vestments. We have in the past used the Cathedral's, but this year they were the property of the Latin Mass Society. We have received a large bequest from a late member, John Arnell, and wished to perpetuate his memory with the purchase of a really good black High Mass set. Each item in the set is now marked with the Latin Mass Society's name, and the note 'Please pray from John Edward Arnell.'

Requiem in Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy

With the kind permission of Fr Matthew Power SJ, a traditional Requiem Mass was celebrated on Saturday 3rd November in the St Thomas More Chapel of the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy. The celebrant was Fr Daniel Seward of the Oxford Oratory.

How Agatha Christie saved the Latin Mass

This weekend I have an article in the Catholic Herald's print edition. It begins:

On November 26, 1971, the front page of the Universe informed its readers as follows:

As from this Sunday, the first in Advent, it is forbidden to offer Mass in the Tridentine rite anywhere in the world. In very special circumstances old or retired priests may apply to their own bishop for permission to use the rite, but for private use only.

Only a few days later, however, on December 2, the Times carried a rather different story, under the headline “Pope sanctions traditional Latin Mass in Britain”. The Tridentine Mass was, in fact, celebrated in Westminster Cathedral on June 17 the following year, the first of a series of two annual Masses at the High Altar using the older Missal. Monthly traditional Masses in the Cathedral’s crypt were also initiated. Both series of Masses continue to this day, although the crypt Masses have now moved to the Lady Chapel.

In the nick of time, it would seem, the public celebration of the Vetus Ordo, now also called the Extraordinary Form, was preserved, at least in England and Wales. How had this come about?

Continue reading.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Marriage lite comes to England

I have a new post on LifeSiteNews. It begins:

Following a ruling of Britain’s Supreme Court over the summer, Prime Minister Theresa May has announced that the Government will make the necessary changes to allow heterosexual, and not just homosexual, couples to contract ‘Civil Partnerships’, as opposed to marriages, in England and Wales. (Scotland will probably follow.)

Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, on behalf of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, urged couples not to use this option:


God blesses the marriage bond only when the couple freely and without conditions exchange their consent. We hope that today’s ruling does not deter people from that sacred and life-long commitment.

Back in 2004, when Civil Partnerships were introduced for same-sex couples in the UK, the Bishops of England and Wales did not oppose the legislation, on the basis of government assurances that they would be clearly distinct from marriage. The idea seemed to be that Civil Partnerships addressed the legitimate grievances of same-sex couples, notably over hospital visiting rights and exemption from Inheritance Tax when leaving each other money, and that it would obviate the need for same-sex ‘marriage’.

Things did not turn out that way. Having established the principle that the state has an interest in regulating same-sex relationships in a way clearly paralleling the regulation of marriage, the scene was set for same-sex ‘marriage’ itself in 2014.

Read it all there.
  Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Newman Colloquium series continues

There was a good turn out for the first Newman Colloquium on Saturday 27 Oct 2018. Michael Wee of the Anscombe Centre and I discussed 'Humanae Vitae at 50'.

Hot drinks and plenty of biscuits were very welcome afterwards as it was rather drizzly and cold in Oxford.

The next Newman Colloquium takes place on Saturday 24th November, when I talk to Fr Jeremy Davies, a experienced missionary, doctor, and exorcist.

Visit Newmancolloquium.eventbrite.com to sign up.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.