Confirmations

Bishop Stock will be conferring the sacrament of Confirmation in the Extraordinary Form on Wednesday 23rd November at 7pm in the Church of St Joseph in Bradford.  Opportunities for Confirmation in the EF rarely occur in the northern dioceses, so this is an occasion not to be overlooked.

I suggest that candidates who have been properly prepared (or their parents) should contact St Joseph's Church (01274 720299).

Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and the English Martyrs, Preston

I shall be travelling to Preston on Sunday to attend a Pontifical Mass celebrated by Bishop Michael Campbell of the Diocese of Lancaster to mark the transfer of the Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and the English Martyrs to the care of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest.  It will become a shrine of the English Martyrs.

The Mass will be at 11.30, and the church is situated just to the north of the city centre on the Garstang Road.  The church was built and later extended by Edward Welby Pugin, son of the great AWN Pugin, and remains very much unchanged.

I look forward to seeing the inside.

Summorum Pontificum

I have recently returned from the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage to Rome.  Although I travelled by myself, I was able to join about 2000 other pilgrims from all parts of the world for Mass in St Peter's Basilica last Saturday.

For me the pilgrimage started on the Thursday evening with Mass in the church of Santa Maria supra Minerva where Mgr Wach of the Institute of Christ the King was the celebrant and preacher.  I was not able to attend the the Way of the Cross on the Friday as it would have involved too much walking, so instead, I took the Metro to the basilica of San Giovanni and was able to join a guided tour.

I did, however, join the procession on the Saturday from the Chiesa Nuova to St Peter's.  In the afternoon, I visited the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.  On Sunday, I was able to attend Mass at the church belonging to the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter.  This was a Solemn Mass in the Dominican Rite, which was a new experience for me.

The Future of the Anglicanism in Britain.

Every year since 1983, an organisation called the National Centre for Social Research has conducted its British Social Attitudes Survey.  In almost every year, it has included a question asking respondents about their religious affiliation.    The most conspicuous trend over the years has been the growth in the proportion of people who say that they do not associate themselves with any religious denomination.  They have grown from 31 percent in 1983 to 53 percent in 2016.

The proportion of the population who describe themselves as being Catholic has remained remarkably constant over the years, at around 9% -  the minor fluctuations being within the margins of statistical error.   Affiliation to the Church of England and other Anglican Churches (ie Scottish Episcopal Church and Church in Wales) has declined fairly consistently from 40% in 1983 to 15% in 2016.  Here are some sample figures:

          Year          Anglican/C of E           Catholic
          1983                  40                             10
          1987                  37                             10
          1991                  36                             10
          1995                  32                              9
          1999                  27                              9
          2003                  27                              9
          2007                  21                              9
          2011                  21                              9
          2015                  17                              9
          2016                  15                              9

I have projected these figures forward a few years.  Although making such predictions is a risky business, the trends are so clear that I am fairly confident about making them.  The figures look like this:

          2017                 14                              8
          2018                 13                              8
          2019                 12                              8
          2020                 11                              8
          2021                 10                              8
          2022                  9                               8
          2023                  8                               8

This would indicate that the Catholic Church will overtake the Anglican Churches as the largest denomination around the year 2023.

Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce the graphical representation here, but I can assure you that it is very convincing.

Our Lady of Fatima

The national pilgrimage statue of Our Lady of Fatima will be visiting St Wilfrid's Church in York between 11th and 13th September.



As part of the programme of events, there will be an Extraordinary Form Mass at 6pm on Tuesday 12th September.  Relics of the visionaries, St Jacinta and St Francesco, will be present for veneration.

Holy Days of Obligation

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales has announced that two Holy Days of Obligation are to be reinstated.  The Feasts of the Epiphany and of the Ascension are in future in England and Wales to be on the actual day, and not on the nearest Sunday.  An exception will be when the Epiphany (6th January) falls on a Saturday or a Monday, in which case it will continue to be celebrated on the Sunday.  The Ascension will always be celebrated on the Thursday which falls 40 days after Easter Sunday.

This decision is to be welcomed.  When, in 2006, the Conference decided to transfer these two feasts, together with Corpus Christi, it was met with a great deal of protest, with many public letters of objection being published.  I think that this must have taken the bishops by surprise, as an undertaking was taken to review the decision.  There then followed more than ten years of silence, despite the occasional enquiring letter.  Most people had concluded that that the bishops had no intention of reversing the decision, so the recent announcement has come as a surprise to many of us who have been campaigning for a review.

Interestingly, our bishops have not reinstated the Feast of Corpus Christi to its traditional date.  Why should this be?  One possible explanation is that the bishops wanted to avoid a complete reversal of the earlier decision, thinking, maybe, that a partial retraction would not look like such a big climb down.  This could also be the reason for the long delay.  Nevertheless, many people will find it difficult to understand how it can be right that the obligation to attend Mass applied up to 2006 and after 2017, but not between these dates.

There is another practical point that affects Latin Mass provision.  In the last ten years, many priests who are supporters of the Latin Mass, have taken the opportunity of transferred Holy Days to celebrate Latin Masses on the traditional day of the feast.  It will be interesting to see how many of these continue to do so, as it is likely that there will be some pressure on them to offer English Masses on these days.

Mass in Hull

On Wednesday 6th September, being the first Wednesday of the month, there will be a Low Mass at 6.30pm  at St Charles Church in Hull.  The celebrant will be Fr Peter Mulholland

Seminarians Portsmouth Diocese

I wrote in the previous post that the Diocese of East Anglia will shortly have 12 seminarians, and suggested that this may be more than any other diocese in England and Wales.  I was wrong.  According to the Catholic Herald, the Diocese of Portsmouth will have 14 seminarians at the start of the new term.  This is said to be the biggest number for the diocese in living memory.

It is unusual for any diocese to give much publicity to the number of their seminarians, possibly because the numbers are depressingly small.  A quick search on the internet has not revealed any figures for other dioceses, although the website of Oscott College does list their current students giving their home diocese.

The article in the Catholic Herald says that in recent years there have between 30 and 40 new seminarians each year, although in 2016 the number dipped to 26.  If the news from East Anglia and Portsmouth is anything like typical, there could be a bumper crop of new seminarians this year.

I suspect that it is more a case of these two dioceses being exceptional.  Portsmouth is, of course, headed by Bishop Egan, who has gained a reputation as a excellent bishop and one who is very sympathetic to tradition.  Similarly, Bishop Hopes of East Anglia, has also proved to be friendly to the Latin Mass.  Probably, the correct conclusion is that dioceses where the bishop is friendly to tradition tend to be more successful in attracting vocations.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has information about the numbers of seminarians in other dioceses.