In thanksgiving for many petitions granted.

Fr. Rutler preaches, illuminated by the midday winter sun, at the Church of Our Saviour on the Feast of St. Sylvester. And a fine sermon it was, too.

The Original Church of England Overtakes the New One?

Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country’s dominant religious group, according to the Sunday Telegraph, as more people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the (Anglican) Church of England. “This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation’s most popular Christian denomination,” Jonathan Wynne-Jones reports, “after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation”. Sunday attendance at Anglican services has dropped a whopping 20% since the year 2000. Catholic Mass attendance in the past six years, however, has also dropped a dramatic 13%, a decline assuaged by the arrival of thousands of Polish immigrants since Poland joined the European Union.

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A LITTLE SOMETHING for our good friends from university who’ve just moved to London from the countryside. I hope that when they are in the Cathedral they will pop into our patron’s chapel, glance at the mosaic of our dear old Royal Burgh of St Andrews, remember good times, and say a prayer for us all.

IT WAS TERENCE who wrote Modo liceat vivere, est spes, meaning “While there’s life, there’s hope”. This coming Wednesday is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and it would be particularly appropriate to remember in our prayers to the Virgin the President of Cuba, Fidel Castro. Castro’s health has been deteriorating greatly of late, so we must earnestly pray to Our Lady that the Cuban president will accept the gracious mercy of Our Lord as he nears the end of his earthly life. (The recent and shocking defeat of the referendum to enshrine socialism in Venezuela has been attributed to the intervention of the Virgin of Coromoto, but rest assured that Our Lady is never too busy to hear our prayers). It would be very foolish and neglectful to think that Mr. Castro, who has been baptized after all, is somehow beyond the grace of God, so please remember him in your prayers: these Brigittine nuns certainly are!

AMONG THE CURIOSITIES held in the St Andrews University Museum is the death mask of Pedro de Luna (1328-1423), one of the Avignon antipopes, who styled himself Benedict XIII. De Luna issued bulls granting university status to the group of scholars at St Andrews, and thus the Universitas Doctorum Magistrorum et Scholarum Sancti Andreae apud Scotos was born. The bulls were later confirmed by Pope Martin V, whose election ended the Great Western Schism. De Luna’s name lives on at St Andrews in the University’s coat of arms: the chief of the shield features a crescent, punning on the Antipope’s last name, which of course is Spanish for ‘moon’.

EVERY NOW AND THEN, there is a minor hubbub; perhaps not even enough to be called a hubbub, but call it a hubbub we shall. The hubbub in question is on the subject of James II (seen above, with his father Charles I), our last Catholic king, and the man who (as Duke of York) gave his name to the great city and land of New York. We have previously expounded upon King James on this little corner of the web, but fresh notice was brought by Fr. Nicholas Schofield on his Roman Miscellany blog. In the blog post A Royal Penitent, Fr. Nicholas writes: (more…)

Not long ago I signed up for a trial subscription to the National Catholic Register, and while it certainly exceeds the other national Catholic newspapers on presentation, it lacks the weight of the Wanderer. A quick glance in the October 28, 2007 edition makes this clear. I speak, namely, of the article “Knights Templar: More Than the Stuff of Fiction”. The article points out that the Order of the Knights Templar was “founded in Jerusalem in 1118 to protect Christian pilgrims and defend the Christian presence in the Holy Land. … It was suppressed by Pope Clement V in 1312, following accusation of heresy against its members, and subsequently became the focus of legends and mysteries, most recently the outrageously inaccurate Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.” The article then mentioned the recent rediscovery in the Vatican Archives of a document relating to the Knights Templar. All fair enough, up to now.

The Register‘s correspondent “spoke last month in Rome with Patrick Rae, a former brigadier general in the U.S. Army Reserve who serves as Grand Commander of the Knights Templar.” Huh? What? Was it not just stated that the Knights Templar were suppressed by Pope Clement V in 1312? The Register offers no help in explaining this discrepancy to us. General Rae, however, later informs us that the Knights Templar “reconstituted as a French order under Napoleon and from that day until today it has existed, an unbroken string”. This is rather mixing fact and fiction.

1) The Knights Templar no longer exist. They were suppressed by the Pope in the fourteenth century and not revived.

2) The group of which Patrick Rae is Grand Commander is an organization called the “Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani” (OSMTH) also known by its English name of the “Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem” (SMOTJ). It is neither sovereign, nor is it an order, but is instead a Christian ecumenical aid organization which styles itself an order.

3) There are dozens, if not hundreds, of groups going around calling themselves the Order of Knights Templar. In actual fact, they are not orders (they are merely ordinary associations, like a chess club or your friendly local circle of stamp-collectors) and they are not Templar (since the Templars no longer exist).

It is beyond me why the Register‘s correspondent chose to speak with the head of this particular Templar-style group out of the hundreds of Templar-style groups. Perhaps the correspondent was impressed by the UN’s recognition of the OSMTH with special consultative status. This status has also been granted to many other groups, such as the Rotary Club of Kathmandu, the Tunisian Mothers Association, and the Boy Scouts of America. But the reporter makes no real attempt to point out that the Knights Templar in question are not, in fact, the Knights Templar (which, again, no longer exist). Whether he is disingenuous or merely ignorant is up to question (in a spirit of Christian charity, let us assume the latter). However there can be no question that this is simply sloppy journalism.

Tradition in New York

November 1, 2007 (Thursday)
The Feast of All Saints
Holy Day of Obligation

Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form)
7:30 pm
Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel
230 East 90th Street
(between 2nd & 3rd)

November 2, 2007 (Friday)
The Commemoration of All Souls
& First Friday

Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form)
6:30 pm
Church of St. Vincent de Paul
123 West 23rd Street
(between Avenue of the Americas & 7th Avenue)

November 5, 2007 (Monday)
Annual Solemn Requiem
of the New York Purgatorial Society

Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form)
6:15pm
Church of St. Agnes
143 East 43rd Street
(between 3rd & Lexington)

November 17, 2007 (Saturday)
The Sleep of Reason
Part one of the Roman Forum’s Modern Image & Catholic Truth series

9:00am – 4:00pm
Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel
230 East 90th Street
(between 2nd & 3rd)

Modern man has a positive image of himself that has been shaped and very effectively propagandized since the time of the Renaissance. In three conferences between November and May, the Roman Forum’s Modern Image and Catholic Truth series will explore the gap between this image and the true predicament in which the individual and contemporary society now find themselves trapped.

Part One: The Sleep of Reason

Modernity speaks of the eighteenth century Enlightenment as the “Age of Reason”. But proponents of the Enlightenment were often dubious about the ability of the human mind to understand man and nature and more interested in limiting the scope of rational activity than increasing it. Much of their labor ended by declaring the universe to be the mere plaything of the human will and passion, while practical backing for many of the Enlightenment’s goals came from strange combinations of mystical speculation and calls for the exercise of Machtpolitik.

9:00am
Holy Mass
(Latin, Extraordinary Form)

9:45am – 10:30am
Registration

10:30am – 11:30am
Pietism, Jansenism, Enlightenment
& the Victory of Power over Reason
Dr. John Rao

11:45am – 12:45pm
Adam Smith and Karl Marx:
A Study in the Logic of the Enlightenment
Dr. Jeffrey Bond

12:45pm – 2:15pm
Lunch
(A second Mass is also available in the Church)

2:15pm- 3:15pm
The Scientific Revolution & the Social Contract
Theory of Hobbes, Locke & Rousseau
Rev. Dr. Richard Munkelt

3:15pm – 4:00pm
Panel Discussion

For further information please contact the Roman Forum (dvhinstitute@aol.com or call 212-645-2971).

COST
$30: Reserve by November 10th
$40: Pay at the door, entrance and lunch
$10: Pay at the door, entrance alone

Checks payable to:
The Roman Forum
11 Carmine Street, 2C
New York, NY, 10014

I REMEMBER HEARING about the foundation of Clear Creek Monastery some years ago. A small handful of monks from Fontgombault in France, the king of the traditionalist abbeys, were sent to found a Benedictine community in the hills of Oklahoma, devoted to the Old Mass. I saw the splendid and very traditional plan drawn up for a church and residence and thought to myself: “Wouldn’t it be nice if that actually came to fruition”. Well, I’m happy to say it actually did, and the handful of traditional Benedictines (completely in communion with Rome and the Bishop of Tulsa) have grown and are apparently thriving. They’ve even completed the crypt of their church and the monastery building. (more…)

THE RED MASS is an ancient tradition which marks the beginning of the legal session every year. It takes its name from the red vestments used for a Mass of the Holy Ghost, invoking God’s protection over the judges, lawyers, and officials as they duly practice the law. Msgr. Langham, the Administrator of Westminster Cathedral, was kind enough to post a few pictures of the Red Mass offered at the Mother Church of Catholic England on the splendid cathedral weblog. A similar service is held at Westminster Abbey for the Protestant officials of the law.

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Anyone who’s on Facebook and has all the right ideas must join the group “Elizabeth I: Heretic, Usurper, Tyrant”.

THE CATHOLIC COLONY of Maryland was first planted in 1634 at St. Mary’s, which became the first capital city of the Calvert family’s palatinate. The attempt to run Terra Mariae as a Catholic feudal state was continually frustrated by a number of fiery Protestant settlers, who eventually broke out into open rebellion in the 1650s while the Civil Wars raged back in England. Happily, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, sent out an army under Gov. William Stone to restore order to the colony, but was defeated by the Puritan force in March, 1655 at the Battle of the Severn. During the Puritans’ persecution of the Church, all the Catholic churches in Maryland were destroyed, and in 1667 a new ecclesiastical edifice was raised in St. Mary’s: the Brick Chapel.

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Corpus Christi Church, West 121st Street, New York: perhaps my favorite Catholic church interior in all New York, and one which simply cries out for a traditional Mass. (more…)

Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. …

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.

Baronius Press have reported a doubling in their sales of missals for the old Mass, or the “extraordinary form” as we are to call it now, since the release of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. Readers will be shocked to hear that I am actually a reactionary (however accidentally) because I only have a 1960 missal, not the 1962 missal which is the actual missal used at traditional masses. However, I would not object if anyone would like to gift me a brand spanking new 1962 daily missal from Baronius Press. The perfect gift for young Catholics: St. Nicholas Day is just around the corner! (Alright, over two months away, but still…).

Baronius Press are also coming out with the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which has received an Imprimatur and will be available from sometime in October.

BUILT IN 1745, the Old Archbishop’s Palace in New Orleans is believed to be the oldest building in the entire Mississippi Valley. The building has gone through a number of ecclesiastical uses through the centuries, originally constructed to French plans for the Ursuline sisters who came to foster the Christian faith in la Louisiane. On the corner of Chartres Street and Ursulines Avenue in western corner of the Vieux Carré, the Convent survived the Great Fire of 1788, along with the neighboring barracks and Royal Hospital. The Ursuline nuns took orphans into their care here, and educated the daughters of the city’s elite and of the local plantation owners (among them Baroness Pontalba), as well as organizing special handiworks classes for Indian and Negro girls. And it was in the Chapel of the Convent that the Ursuline nuns kept vigil during the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, praying ceaselessly for the salvation of New Orleans from destruction. This great event was attributed to the Blessed Virgin, and Notre Dame de Bon Secours (Our Lady of Prompt Succour) was adopted as the patron of the city and diocese of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. (more…)

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