Renewal of Catholic Education: Regina Caeli Academy

Parents looking for a specifically Catholic education will now have a new opportunity for their children in the Northwest of England. The FSSP in Warrington are opening the Regina Caeli Hybrid Academy in Warrington this September in association with their thriving parish there and beautiful church.

You can read about it in their magazine "Dowry" on the last page here: 

2021-03-18-Dowry-48.pdf (fssp.org.uk)

The Rector, Fr Armand de Malleray writes:

In 2019, a few families in Bedfordshire took the initiative to bring a successful U.S. model of Classical Catholic education to the U.K. and founded Regina Caeli Academy UK, with pastoral support from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. In its second year, the number of families using the Academy has already doubled, with more families joining and moving to the area this year in anticipation of September 2021. Full details about Regina Caeli Academy, including an introductory video, fees, timetables and curriculum, are available at www.rcahybrid.org.uk.

Given the growing community in Warrington, and answering demand from local parents, we would very much like to start a centre at St Mary’s Warrington, with God’s help, from September 2021. The Academy offers a full Classical Curriculum, completely grounded on the magisterium of the Catholic Church, and a community of Catholic families. Trained, paid teachers provide two days per week of on-site tuition. For the other days of the week, comprehensive study plans are provided for parents to follow with their children. Parents benefit from structure, accountability and community, and their children gain Catholic friends for life.

Over the past 18 years, thousands of children have been educated with this curriculum in the U.S., so parents can be confident that it is a tried and tested system of Catholic education which results in robust qualifications, a lifelong love of learning and, most importantly, a deep-rooted faith.

If you are a parent who is interested in the Warrington RCA for your own children, please email Michael and Aileen Seymour, the Warrington coordinators of Regina Caeli Academy: TheAcademyStMarys@gmail.com giving your contact details and your children’s ages/current school years. Alternatively, if you would like to apply for the Warrington RCA, please fill out the application form at: https://www.rcahybrid.org.uk/application-form.

If you are a teacher who wants to work in such a Catholic environment, or have administrative skills that could help shape the Academy, please also contact us as above. We don’t need financial assistance to start up, but you could certainly also help us with prayer, in particular to the now Venerable Mother Elizabeth Prout, foundress of the female branch of the Passionists who used to run St Mary’s School in Warrington. Any financial support will be gratefully received by Regina Caeli Academy: please contact in advance Regina Caeli Academy UK: https://www.rcahybrid.org.uk/contact (please note that the FSSP does not presently collect donations in connection with this project).

To allow us to plan the expected opening, we need to know by 1st May 2021 how many children will start with us in September.

Please be sure to contact us long before that deadline. Lastly, please share this information far and wide now. Thank you on behalf of many children – and their parents!

Can you help?

I've created a Justgiving page to help raise funds for this project at St Peter's School. St Peter's is an International School dedicated first and foremost to educating pupils as Catholics but to do this in the modern world means educating them with the necessary skills to live their Faith in a very challenging secular environment: up to date technology is an important part of this, so we want to install a TV screen in each of our classrooms, which can then be linked up to the internet. As we've all found, more important than ever in these times. In continuity with the school's dedication to St Peter, our classrooms are each named after one of his successors. 

The school is run by the PETRUS fondation pour l’enseignement international, a charitable Association registered with the French state under the law 1901.

Read more of our school's story of setting up during the Covid 19 lockdown at:

https://www.stpetersfr.com /

and at: 

Offerimus Tibi Domine: Catholic Education: A new Catholic School. St Peter's International College

Offerimus Tibi Domine: Catholic School -- how to make one!

As you may imagine, starting up in these times especially, has been quite a challenge, so every little helps, as the saying goes. Thank you to anyone who might be able to contribute and please feel free to share. God keep you.

JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/justgivingstpetersclassrooms?utm_term=8Z47NzD6a

This was one of the classrooms when we started!

And to prove yours truly has been mucking in and doing his bit...

(My cassock was in the wash, by the way)

And where the TV screens will be going now.

Easter Sunday and Easter Week

 Please note that there are two opportunities for you to attend Easter Mass. Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 8.30am

Holy Saturday

The Easter Vigil 

& First Mass of Easter at 8pm

Easter Sunday. 8.30am Easter Mass

Monday of the Easter Octave 9.30am

Tuesday of the Easter Octave 12 noon (EF)

Wednesday of the Easter Octave 9.30am

Thursday of the Easter Octave 

7pm Novena & Benediction

Friday of the Easter Octave 9.30am

Saturday of the Easter Octave Confession 11.30m - 11.50am

Mass (EF) 12 noon

Divine Mercy Sunday 8.30am & 10am

2021 Easter Message 

from the Most Reverend Malcolm McMahon OP 

Archbishop of Liverpool 

 The events of the first Easter morning began quietly, in stark contrast to the violence and baying crowds which accompanied the crucifixion on Good Friday. Mary Magdalen went to the tomb early in the morning on the first day of the week – while it was still dark – while it was quiet with no people around and none of the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem, the busy city. Things began to change when she saw that the stone had been rolled away, she ran to Simon Peter and the disciple John saying, ‘they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him’. The disciples ran to the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying on the ground, they believed. 

Mary though was not joyful, she did not have hope, she stood outside the empty tomb weeping asking where the body of Jesus had been taken. Yet as she recognised the risen Jesus her life was transformed moving from darkness to light, from sorrow to joy and from despair to hope. 

For over a year now we have been living under the darkness of the pandemic, just as the light of the Risen Christ is always with us so we have seen light in that darkness through the bravery, generosity and kindness of others. The light offered to us by the heroes of our NHS, carers, and all who have worked to keep our country going. 

Easter is always a time of reawakening and this year as a country we are approaching our own reawakening. Our villages, towns and cities have been quiet, but they are slowly and cautiously coming back to life. We are seeing hope through the vaccine, developed through the gifts of science, giving us hope for a better and safer future. 

There have been times of grief, loss, doubt and despair during the dark days, and we hold in prayer all who have suffered. We bring those times to our celebration of the resurrection which begins in darkness in our churches with the lighting of the Easter Candle symbolising the risen Christ. A life-giving light overcoming the darkness, bringing healing to a broken world. 

Just as the lives of Mary Magdalen and the disciples were transformed on the first Easter morning so too our lives may be transformed as we embrace the light of the Risen Lord who sheds his peace on all humanity. 

May God bless us all on this glorious Easter Day.

Palm Sunday and Holy Week

Please note the times - particularly that there is only one Mass on Easter day itself.

Don't forget that the clocks spring forwards in the early hours of Sunday morning this week.

  Palm Sunday

8.30am Mass

10am Mass

Monday in Holy Week. 9.30am Mass

                    Tuesday in Holy Week. EF Mass 12 noon              

Wednesday in Holy Week. 9.30am Mass

SACRED TRIDUUM

Holy Thursday. 

Mass of the Lord’s Supper 7pm

Good Friday.  

Passion of the Lord 3pm

CONFESSIONS afterwards

Holy Saturday. 

The Easter Vigil 

& First Mass of Easter at 8pm

Easter Sunday. 8.30am Easter Mass

Fifth Sunday of Lent

The Annunciation 

(tempera with gold leaf on raised tooled gesso on wooden panel) 

by Arthur Joseph Gaskin (1862-1928)

Two special celebrations this week.

On Tuesday the Bishops of England and Wales have asked that we all participate in the National Day of Reflection for Covid 19 to mark the anniversary of the first lockdown. We will do so here by offering a Votive Mass at 12 noon for deliverance from death in time of pestilence, according to the 1962 Missal.

Thursday is the Feast of the Annunciation. We will begin the Stations of the Cross by reciting the Angelus.

This Sunday marks the start of Passion Week. Liturgically, our Lenten preparations are ratcheted up a notch, as we see statues and images veiled in church.

MASSES THIS WEEK

SUNDAY

8.30am

10am

Monday --- No public Mass today

Tuesday 12 noon (EF). Mass to mark the National Day of Reflection

Wednesday  9.30am.  Lenten Feria

Thursday: Feast of the Annunciation.  7pm STATIONS OF THE CROSS

Confessions following on from Stations

Friday 9.30am. Lenten Feria

Saturday 11.30 - 11.45am CONFESSIONS

                12 noon (EF) Feria in Passion Week

Heads Up Interview

 

Principal at St Peter's International College in conversation on the Heads Up Podcast of Matthew Burke at St Edward's Senior School in Cheltenham on the challenges, philosophy and hopes of a new school.

Click on the link below to listen - just 17 minutes. 

Spotify – Heads Up... with Matthew Jackson - Heads Up | Podcast on Spotify

Inclusive language and Synod 2020 in the Archdiocese of Liverpool

I spent yesterday on a Zoom conference for Synod 2020 here in the Archdiocese of Liverpool and, oh my, am I depressed. The Recommendations we were being presented with (now available HERE) are drawn from the previous Proposals (HERE).  The very fact that each Recommendation begins with "We the people recommend..." echoing the Introduction to the United States Constitution, appalls me.  To me, it comes over as rather pompous, but also associates us immediately with a Constitution of a State that is built on separating itself from religion. God get's a mention - "one nation under God" - but is then left out of everything else. Is this a good model for us to draw on? The Church is not a democracy where we can choose what we want. Jesus stated His case and you either went with it or you didn't. He didn't take a straw poll of who the crowd wanted to be Blessed when He was giving the Sermon on the Mount.

The Recommendations are all couched in language so vague as to be capable of many interpretations. 

This makes it look churlish to disagree with any of them.

***

It also means that we can vote yes to a Recommendation with no real idea of what that means.

Do we believe women are equal, valued, visible and heard - Yes, certainly. But does that mean founding an Order of nuns of diocesan rite to teach in our schools or does it mean picketing the Vatican for women's ordination? 

The same is true of most of the Recommendations.

***

So we don't really know what we're voting for. EXCEPT that the whole language and process used throughout the Synod indicates a direction of travel that is more of the same thing we've been doing for some years now and it's that very path that has led us to the necessity of calling a Synod because things are so dire. 

The whole language is that of the secular world and the politically correct. None of it is really couched in Gospel terms or the language of the Saints or the philosophy of our Tradition of 2,000 years. It mimics the corporate world, it apes the realm of secular governance. Replace the words "Church" or "Archdiocese" with "Tesco Ltd" or "Government Department of Health" and anyone in those realms would recognise and feel right at home with the terms of reference.

What's missing, to me - and I know to many others - is the supernatural, the spiritual, the challenge to the world to come with us or go crawling unknowingly on the road to perdition.

***

This will sound extreme to some but I'm not alone in thinking along these lines. There are many in the Archdiocese, priests and laity, who have grave concerns. The truth is that there is a hidden Archdiocese that feels very much excluded by the soi-disant inclusive language of the Synod; that is to say (in Synodese): inclusive does not include those who think the Synod is going in the wrong direction.

This hidden Archdiocese mostly stays quiet because it thinks (it experiences) that it is futile to go against the direction of travel. Everything about the process and the manner in which it's carried out tells us so. At least, that is how it feels to to some of us: that we are given lip-service but not really listened to, not really included. These are not all people often identified as Mad, Bad and Trad, but a swathe of the people of God here very much distressed and frustrated.

I say all this in charity for all the other ordinary members of the Synod whom I know act and speak in good faith. But we are here too "We the excluded!), another part of the People of God who believe that the push towards this type of modernity is not the right way forward. May the Holy Spirit guide us all.