Important Reminder

Starting on Wednesday 6th May, there will be a regular monthly Latin Mass at 6.30pm in the Church of St Charles in Hull. The usual celebrant will be Fr Peter Mulholland. Please spread the word about this Mass, which will be on the First Wednesday of each month.

Prior Park College

I have recently returned from the priest and server training conference held at Prior Park College in Bath. Regrettably there were not many priests from England and Wales at the conference, but the numbers were made up with priests from Scotland, Poland and even one from St Lucia in the Caribbean. There were, however, two English seminarians, one of whom is a deacon and will shortly be ordained a priest. He worked particularly hard at learning the older form of the Mass, because he wants to be proficient by the time of his ordination this summer. So long as we have young men like him passing through the seminaries, we can take encouragement that the Latin Mass will be around for another generation.

Ordinations in the USA

It is reported that there are to be 595 ordinations to the priesthood in the USA this summer, an increase of 118 or about 25% over last years figure of 477. Compared with 2005, it is a 31% increase. Although this year's figure may be exceptional, scrutiny of the statistics, both of ordinations and seminarians, indicates that there is an upward trend of about 5% year on year. Although doing little to redress the fall in the number of priest over the last 50 years, it is pleasing that tide has turned, and that there is cause for modest optimism. It is interesting to note that the current crop of ordinations started their training in 2008 or 2009, early in the pontificate of Benedict XVI. Could this be evidence of a Benedict bounce? I have written before that what happens in America often happens a few years later this side of the Atlantic. It would be great if it did in this case.