Daily EF Mass for the Octave of Pentecost

To mark the Octave of Pentecost, there will be a Mass in the Extraordinary Form every day this week from Monday to Friday at 6 p.m. at the Birmingham Oratory. This will be followed immediately with the Novena to St Philip, a short period of Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction. Please do your best to support these masses by attending if you are at all able to.

FSSP Year of Faith Retreat

Year of Faith retreat for all:

31 May-2 June 2013

'You shall be My witnesses' (Acts 1:8):

In the prayerful and relaxing setting of Douai Abbey, come and reflect with us on how to bear a more fruitful witness to Our Blessed Lord Jesus in our everyday lives.

Upper Woolhampton, Reading, West Berks. RG7 5TQ.

Starts Friday 5pm, ends Sunday 3pm.

Led by Fr Armand de Malleray FSSP, assisted by Fr Matthew Goddard FSSP.

(Picture: The Calling of Apostles, by Domenico Ghirlandaio)

Spiritual conferences and direction, Holy Masses, Eucharistic adoration.

Cost full board 2 days including VAT: £140 single room with ensuite bathroom, £110 shared room with ensuite bathroom or £90 without. Low income/Unwaged: contact us for significant discounts. Bookings/info: FSSP, 17 Eastern Avenue, Reading RG1 5RU, Berks. malleray@fssp.org. www.fssp.org.uk/england

Booking : please send us your £20 deposit (per person), made payable to FSSP ENGLAND. Remainder to be paid at the Abbey during the retreat.

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Read online the latest edition of our quarterly magazine Dowry N°17 (Winter 2013).

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Please pray for our 7 English seminarians and for 3 more applying for next autumn.

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To contact us:

Priestly Fraternity of St Peter in England, 17 Eastern Avenue, Reading RG1 5RU, Berkshire, England

Telephone: 0118 966 5284;

Fr de Malleray: malleray@fssp.org;

Fr Goddard: goddard@fssp.org

Community: www.fssp.org.uk/england

The Decline of the Catholic Church in England and Wales since the 1960s

Newly released statistics show the decline of the Catholic Church in England and Wales in 1960s and 1970s.

Research by Latin Mass Society has demonstrated the striking decline of a range of statistical indications of the health of the Catholic Church in England and Wales in the 1960s and 1970s.

To our knowledge this data has never been made available in collated form before: the number of ordinations year by year since 1860, the number of priests since 1890, and baptisms, marriages, and receptions, and estimates of the Catholic population, since 1913.

Among the findings are:

Marriages: The number of marriages collapsed by a third between 1968 and 1978 (from 47,417 to 31,534), and has continued a rapid decline since then, now standing at less than 10,000 a year, a quarter of the 1968 level in absolute terms, and even less in relation to the estimated Catholic population (from 12 per thousand in 1968) to 2½ per thousand in 2010).

Conversions fell off a cliff in the 1960s. From a peak of 15,794 in 1959, it fell to 5,117 in 1972; in relation the Catholic population, it fell by more than 70% between those two years. It has not recovered.

Baptisms halved between 1964 and 1977 (137,673 in 1964 to 68,351 in 1977), and are even lower today (oscillating around the 60,000 mark). This is not just the effect of the end of the ‘baby boom’: considered in relation to total live births for England and Wales (using data from the Office for National Statistics), the first half of the 20^th century saw steady growth, with Catholic baptisms peaking at nearly 16% of all live births in 1963. This was followed by a decline of a third between the mid 1960s and the mid 1970s. A more gentle decline has continued to the present: today fewer than 10% of babies born alive in England and Wales are being baptised in the Catholic Church. 

Ordinations fell by more than 56% between 1965 and 1977 (from 233 to 101), and the decline has continued. Even on the more optimistic figures supplied by the National Office of Vocations (compared to the Catholic Directory) for the current year, showing an increase on recent years, numbers are at scarcely 30% of their 1964 level. (Counting only ordinations to the diocesan clergy, there were 134 in 1964; the NOV predicts 41 this year.)

Dr Joseph Shaw, the Chairman of the Latin Mass Society, who led the research, comments:

‘Anyone with an interest in the future of the Catholic Church in England and Wales will find these figures illuminating. They show unambiguously that something went seriously wrong in the Church in England and Wales in the 1960s and 1970s. Catholics ceased quite suddenly to see the value of getting married, having large families, and having their children baptised. Non-Catholics no longer perceived the Church as the ark of salvation, and ceased to seek admission. Young men no longer offered themselves for the priesthood in the same numbers as before.

‘It is not fanciful to connect this catastrophe to the wrenching changes which were taking place in the Church at that time, when the Second Vatican Council was being prepared, discussed, and, often erronesouly, applied. As Pope Benedict wrote in the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007):

in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new Missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorizing or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear. I am speaking from experience, since I too lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion. And I have seen how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church.

‘The theological and liturgical fashions of that era were invariably justified by the hope of positive pastoral results, and these results manifestly failed to materialise.

‘The effect of dissent from the Church’s teaching is particularly manifest in relation to contraception, which has had a direct consequence on the Catholic birth rate, as reflected in the number of baptisms, compared to the national birth rate.

‘The Church in England and Wales today has fewer than half the ordinations each year than it had in the 1860s, but more than double the number of priests. A large proportion of those priests, however, will die or have to stop work over the next decade. In this respect we are still living on our capital, and this capital is about to run out.

‘The Extraordinary Form has not lost its power to attract young men to the priesthood, and the communities which have grown up around it today provide disproportionate numbers of vocations, marriages, and baptisms. Thirteen young men from England and Wales are currently studying for the priesthood in the different religious orders committed to the Extraordinary Form; three more should join them in September; these are numbers which many dioceses would envy.

‘We believe that the Extraordinary Form (the Traditional Mass) has an important role to play in resolving the crisis in the Church.’

Notes on the statistics.

Unless otherwise indicated, the statistics are taken from the Catholic Directory. Statistics for ordinations can be recovered only by manually counting the lists of men ordained each year; some of this work was done by the Rev. Stephen Morgan and a team at the Diocese of Portsmouth. The Latin Mass Society has filled in the gaps in Rev. Morgan’s figures and extended the range of dates covered in both directions. In addition, the LMS has added the total number of clergy, and the numbers given in the Directory’s ‘Recapitulation of Statistics’ since 1913, which include Baptisms, Marriages, Adult Conversions (renamed ‘Receptions’ in 1976), and estimates of the Catholic population.

We are very grateful to the Rev. Stephen Morgan for letting us use the fruits of his research, to the Fathers of the London Oratory for giving us access to their library, and to a number of Latin Mass Society volunteers for their time.

For further information contact either: Mike Lord, General Manager, on 020 7404 7284 or michael@lms.org.uk

The full press release (reproduced here) on the LMS website:

http://www.lms.org.uk/resources/statistics-from-the-catholic-directory

A downloadable spreadsheet showing all the figures with 13 graphs:

http://www.lms.org.uk/resources/catholic-directory-statistics

JPEGs of all the graphs on a Flickr set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55776120@N08/sets/72157633478538615/

Vigil of Pentecost Mass at the Birmingham Oratory

There will be a Missa Cantata at the Birmingham Oratory at 9am on Saturday 18th May for the Vigil of Pentecost.

St Catherine's Trust Family Retreat Video

The LMS has produced a video of the recent St Catherine's Trust Family Retreat. It is definitely worth a look if you have never been and wondered what goes on at the event.


One Weekend in April: The St. Catherine's Trust Family Retreat, April 2013 from LMS on Vimeo.

LMS York Pilgrimage 2013 Report

Saturday Shoppers in York Watch Pilgrimage With Respectful Curiosity

Photo: The statue of St Margaret Clitherow is carried through The Shambles in York, close to where the martyr lived. (Photo credit: Leo Darroch)

The Latin Mass Society’s third pilgrimage in honour of St Margaret Clitherow, one of its co-patrons, took place in York on Saturday 4th May, the feast day of the English Martyrs. Solemn Mass was celebrated in the Church of St Wilfrid by Canon Amaury Montjean of the Institute of Christ the King, with Fr Michael Hall as deacon and Fr John Cahill as subdeacon.

After Mass, there was a procession carrying a statue of St Margaret Clitherow through the streets of York and passing through The Shambles, where St Margaret lived, and over Ouse Bridge, the place of her execution. The procession ended at the Church of the English Martyrs, where there Benediction was offered by Fr Stephen Brown. 

York was full of tourists during the Bank Holiday weekend, who watched the procession pass through the crowded streets with a respectful curiosity.

One lady who was visiting from Perth in Australia, and happened to enter St Wilfrid’s Church, just as the Gospel was about to be sung, was amazed at the sight of a Traditional Mass, saying that nothing like that ever took place in her home diocese.

The musical setting of the Mass was Thomas Luis de Victoria’s Missa Simile est Regnum, sung by the Rudgate Singers who also sang Gregorio Allegri’s Adoremus in Aeternum at Benediction. The day ended with the congregation singing Fr Faber’s Faith of our Fathers!

Pilgrimage organiser Paul Waddington said: ‘We were very pleased with the turnout for this year’s pilgrimage which showed an increase on last year’s event. The sight of pilgrims processing through the busy streets of York past Saturday shoppers always draws people’s attention and is an important public witness to the Catholic Faith.’

St Margaret Clitherow was arrested in 1586 for the crime of harbouring Catholic priests. She refused to enter a plea to prevent a trial that would involve her children being made to testify, and therefore being subjected to torture. The standard punishment for refusing to enter a plea was being crushed to death and this was carried out to the horror of many local people on 25 March 1586.

Corrections to the LMS Mass Listings mid-May to early August

The Latin Mass Society produced a new set of mass listings at the end of April for mid-May to early August and for the Feasts of Ascension, Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart and SS Peter and Paul. Unfortunately there are several errors which I undertake to correct below:

The Birmingham Oratory

The Birmingham Oratory Low Mass on Friday is at 6pm, not 5.45pm although turning up early is not a problem! The corrections for the Holydays of Obligation and Transferred Feasts are as follows:

Ascension (9th May):  This is at 7pm, not 7.30pm as in the listings.  The Mass Setting is Gounod's Messe de Ste Cecile. Oodles of Romantic Victorian slush and no boring polyphony according to Fr Richard!
Corpus Christi: Likely to be at the same time but check this blog nearer the time for updates

Sacred Heart: Like the regular Friday Mass, this is likely to be at 6pm rather than 5.45pm
SS Peter and Paul: Will be on Saturday morning (time to be confirmed) and will probably be a Missa Cantanta, but again, check this blog nearer the time for details.

St Patrick's Dudley Road - the Wednesday and Saturday masses here have now ceased due to Fr Anthony Talbot moving to Spetchley in Worcestershire. He is organising a Corpus Christi Extraordinary Form Mass and Procession at his new parish in Worcestershire on 2nd June. As Worcestershire does not appear to have a blog I will post further details here at a later date.

The regular masses are of course listed in the sidebar. If anyone spots any further errors that I have missed please let me know in the comments. Hopefully these errors will happen less frequently in future because on Friday the LMS committee appointed a new Representative and Assistant Representative to the Birmingham and Black Country Area. When the paperwork goes through we hope to contact the members of the LMS in the region to introduce ourselves.

New Mass in Redditch (North Worcestershire)

Fresh news just in:

There will be Mass in the EF at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Redditch on the first Monday of each month at 6.30pm. This is being celebrated thanks to the generosity of Fr George Grynowski, who is travelling from West Heath to celebrate this Mass. It is also thanks to the encouragement and willingness of our parish priest Fr Eddie Clare who has agreed to have the EF Mass celebrated in our church. This is initially for a trial period of six months to gauge interest so it would be very good if people who love the TLM would support this Mass in the hopes that it may become more permanent. I am aware that your blog is really for Birmingham and the Black Country however I hope you will advertise this Mass as I'm sure people would be willing to travel to Redditch.

LMS Clifton Link

I have been kindly informed by Fr Redman that the link I have on the sidebar of local LMS Reps is incorrect with regards to the Clifton Diocese area.
The correct link is:
http://lmsclifton.blogspot.co.uk/
I will update the sidebar when I get a moment.
God bless. Pray for a fine and Saintly Holy Father.
Sent via Blogger on Android for Xperia PLAY

Masses Ending Left Right & Centre

First West Bromwich, then Oldbury, now I think the St Patrick's Masses will soon end due to the relocation of both Priests there. On a positive side, Fr Richard Duncan is a new ordained Priest at the Birmingham Oratory who loves the Extraordinary Form!

Permanent Mass Cessation

Sadly Fr Chris Handsforth is moving Parishes and therefore there will no longer be the monthly Mass at Oldbury (previously West Bromwich). Thank you to Fr Chris for supporting the Latin Mass for the last 18 months, and may God bless him

West Heath Masses

Fr Christopher Miller will be covering the 1830 Friday Masses on 28th Sep and 12th Oct while Fr George is on holiday.

There will be NO mass on 5th & 19th October 2012.

St Patrick's Masses

Sorry it's late

Mon 27th August 8 am
Sat 1st September 11 am
Mon 3rd September 8 am
Tues 4th September 8 am
Wed 5th September 9 am
Sat 8th September NO MASS

Latest St Patricks Masses

Mon 13th August 8 am
Tues 14th August 8 am
Wed 15th August 9 am (Assumption)
Sat 18th August No Mass
Mon 20th August 8 am
Tues 21st August No Mass
Wed 22nd August No Mass
Sat 25th August 11 am

English Lesson/Epistle and Gospel
Parking Northbrook Street over railway bridge

Assumption Masses

St Patrick's 9am (Low)
Halesowen 12noon (Low)
Oratory 5:45pm (Low)

Holy Day of Obligation

Oratory First Friday

I have been reliably informed that Fr Anton now has every first Friday 5:45pm Low Mass said in the Extraordinary Form, in honour of the Sacred Heart.

I have added this to the Google Calendar (top right) accordingly. Although there are plenty of yellow Low Mass booklets I helped produce, these must all be lost; so try to bring a Missal if you want to follow the prayers.

Extra West Heath Mass for Assumption

Fr Grynowski will say Low Mass for this Holy Day of Obligation on 15th August 2012 at 1830hrs.

St Patrick's Masses

Mass times for St Patricks for next 3 weeks:

Mon 23rd July 8 am
Tues 24th July 8 am
Wed 25th July 9 am
Sat 28th July 11 am

Mon 30th July 8 am
Tues 31st July 8 am
Wed 1st August 9 am
Sat 4th August 11 am

Sat 11th August 11 am.

Summer Mass Cancelations

Fr Grynowski has informed me that there will be no Friday evening Mass at West Heath on:
- 27th July 2012
- 3rd August 2012
- 24th August 2012

New Latin Mass Venue - Oldbury

After the loss of the Latin Mass at West Bromwich, Fr Chris Handforth will kindly continue to offer the traditional Latin Mass at one of his own Parish Churches. Please make the effort to attend these Masses; the response will predict the continuation, and perhaps regularity, of these Masses.

Saturday 14th July 2012 at 10am (followed by Benediction)

Regular: 2nd Saturday of each month

St Francis Xavier Church

Simpson Street
Oldbury
Sandwell
B69 4AL

Oldbury is very close to the previous location of West Bromwich and has a major bus station, as well as being easily accessible from major road links; M5 Junction 2 and A457 from Birmingham.