Sunday 26 July 2015

Archbishop Malcolm's Visitation


Last Sunday Archbishop Malcolm came to the parish on Visitation. Thank you to John Robinson who took a lot of photographs at the 10am Mass.  Thanks to everyone in the parish who helped out preparing for the visit and on the day - but special thanks for the wonderful music and all who helped provide it at the 10am Mass and at the Extraordinary Form Mass at 11.30.  We had a great day with the Archbishop, who celebrated the first two Masses and sat in choir for Missa Cantata.  Thanks as well to my brother priests from the diocese who came for lunch afterwards (even those who were still there at supper time!) It was lovely to break bread together with the brethren and our Shepherd.  

I've posted some photographs of the Mass and parishioners can search through to spot themselves in the reception afterwards.



































Thursday 23 July 2015

Mass in Manchester


The Order of St Lazarus is celebrating Mass for Postulants to be invested into the Order 
this Saturday 25th July at 11am 
at the Oratorian Community's Church of St Chad 
on Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester, M8 8GG.

We are very pleased to be welcoming 
the Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham, 
the Right Rev. Robert Byrne 
to celebrate the Mass (which will be that of the Apostle James).

Our guest of honour will be the 
50th Grand Master of the Order 
His Excellency Jan Count Dobrzensky z Dobrzenicz.

The Grand Master with the Chaplain General for the Order, 
His Eminence Dominik Cardinal Duka, 
Archbishop of Prague.

Thanks to the Community at St Chad's for their hospitality in celebrating Solemn Mass in Latin, where the music will include 
Elgar's Ecce Sacerdos, 
Mozart's Mass in C 
and  Edward de Rivera Domine salvam fac.

The Mass is open to everyone 
and should be a splendid occasion 
if you can come along.


Wednesday 15 July 2015

Visitation of the Archbishop of Liverpool


The parish is looking forward to welcoming Archbishop Malcolm McMahon this weekend.  After celebrating a quiet Mass at 8.30am and a sung Mass at 10am, we are giving him a little rest in choir when I will offer the Missa Cantata at 11.30am.

For our occasional visitors who travel in, do come along this Sunday. We will have a splendid eight voice schola to sing. Music including: 

Ecce Sacerdos

Victoria's "Missa O Quam Gloriosum est Regnum"

Martini's "Populum Humilem"

Louis Vierne's "Tantum ergo" and "Ave Maria"

Followed by the usual light refreshments after all the Sunday Mass.

Saturday 11 July 2015

Summer Fete


Its our Summer Fete today starting at 1pm
for anyone within striking distance of Farington.
I shall be manning the Barbeque.

There was very little taught at the seminary about all the essential skills a parish priest needs: barbecuing, drain unblocking, gutter clearing, calling bingo, putting up marquees, raising money, event organising, lawn mower repair.  Still, I suppose all those liturgical dance moves I learnt will eventually come in useful. 

Thursday 9 July 2015

Pope Emeritus Benedict on the joy of sacred music


At Castel Gandolfo recently, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was conferred with a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the John Paul II Pontifical University of Krakow and from the Academy of Music of Krakow, Poland. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, archbishop of Krakow and Grand Chancellor of the John Paul II Pontifical University, conferred the two degrees.

His speech for the occasion is, as ever, thoughtful and insightful; a profound grasp of the details of his subject being shown by expressing its meaning and importance in a wider context. In this case, defending the Church's musical patrimony as a spiritual good and therefore truly pastoral. 


Ladies and Gentlemen!

At this moment, I cannot but express my greatest and most cordial gratitude for the honor you have given me conferring the Doctoratus Honoris Causa. I thank the Grand Chancellor, his dear Eminence Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, and the academic Authorities of both Athenaeums. I rejoice above all over the fact that in this way my bond with Poland, with Krakow, with the homeland of our great Saint John Paul II has become more profound, because without him, my spiritual and theological journey would not have even been imaginable. With his brilliant example he also showed us how the joy of great sacred music and the task of common participation in the sacred liturgy, the solemn joy and the simplicity of the humble celebration of the faith can go hand in hand.

In the years after the Council, on this point a very old disagreement was manifested with renewed passion. I myself grew up in the Salisburghese marked by the great tradition of this city. It was a given here that Sunday Masses accompanied by the choir and orchestra were an integral part of our experience of the faith in the celebration of the liturgy. Indelibly impressed in my memory, for instance, is how, when the first notes of Mozart’s Coronation Mass sounded, Heaven virtually opened and the presence of the Lord was experienced very profoundly. And thanks also to you, who enabled me to hear Mozart and also the Choir for the great songs! Beside this, however, already present in any case also was the new reality of the Liturgical Movement, especially through one of our chaplains who later became Vice-Regent and then Rector of the Major Seminary of Freising. Then, during my studies at Monaco of Bavaria, I entered ever more concretely in the Liturgical Movement through the lessons of Professor Pascher, one of the most significant experts of the Council in liturgical matter, and above all through the liturgical life in the community of the Seminary. Thus little by little the tension became perceptible between the participatio actuosa in keeping with the liturgy and the solemn music that enveloped the sacred action, even if it was not yet perceived so strong.

Written very clearly in the Constitution on the Liturgy of Vatican Council II is that “The patrimony of sacred music be preserved and incremented with great care” (1124). On the other hand, the text evidences, as a fundamental liturgical category, the participatio actuosa of all the faithful in the sacred action. What in the Constitution was still peacefully together, subsequently, in the reception of the Council was often in a relation of dramatic tension. Significant environments of the Liturgical Movement held that, for the great choral works and even for the Masses for orchestra there would be room in the future only in concert halls, not in the liturgy. Here there could be a place only for the common singing and prayer of the faithful. On the other hand, there was consternation over the cultural impoverishment of the Church, which would necessarily flow from this. In what way could both things be reconciled? How could the Council be implemented in its entirety? These were the questions posed to me and to many other faithful, to simple people as well as to persons in possession of theological formation.

At this point, it is right, perhaps, to pose the basic question: What is music in reality? From where does it come and what does it tend to?

I think that three “places” can be localized from which music flows.

One of the first sources is the experience of love. When men are seized by love, a new dimension of being opens in them, a new grandeur and breadth of reality, and it also drives one to express oneself in a new way. Poetry, singing and music in general stem from this being struck, by this opening of oneself to a new dimension of life.

A second origin of music is the experience of sadness, being touched by death, by sorrow and by the abysses of existence. Opened also in this case, in an opposite direction, are new dimensions of reality that can no longer find answers in discourses alone.

Finally, the third place of origin of music is the encounter with the divine, which from the beginning is part of what defines the human.  All the more so here in which the totally other and the totally great is present, which arouses in man new ways of expressing himself. Perhaps, it is possible to affirm that in reality also in the other two ambits – love and death – the divine mystery touches us and, in this sense, it is the being touched by God that, overall, constitutes the origin of music. I find it moving to observe how, for instance, in the Psalms singing is no longer enough for men — an appeal is made to all the instruments: reawakened is the hidden music of creation, its mysterious language. With the Psalter, in which the two motives of love and death also operate, we find directly the origin of sacred music of the Church of God. It can be said that the quality of the music depends on the purity and the grandeur of the encounter with the divine, with the experience of love and of pain. The more pure and true this experience is, the more pure and great also is the music that is born and develops from it.

At this point, I would like to express a thought that has gripped me increasingly, all the more so in as much as the different cultures and religions enter into relation among themselves. Present in the ambit of the different cultures and religions is great literature, great architecture, great painting and great sculptures. And everywhere there is also music. And yet in no other cultural ambit is there music of equal grandeur to that born in the ambit of the Christian faith: from Palestrina to Bach, to Handle, up to Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner. Western music is something unique, which has no equal in other cultures. And this – it seems to me – should make us think.

Certainly, Western music goes beyond by far the religious and ecclesial ambit. And yet it finds its most profound origin, in any case, in the liturgy of the encounter with God. In Bach, for whom the glory of God represents ultimately the end of all music, this is altogether evident. The great and pure answer of Western music was developed in the encounter with that God that, in the liturgy, makes himself present to us in Christ Jesus. For me, that music is a demonstration of the truth of Christianity. Wherever such an answer is developed, there has been an encounter with truth, with the true Creator of the world. Therefore, great sacred music is a reality of theological rank and of permanent meaning for the faith of the whole of Christianity, even if it is not necessary that it be performed always and everywhere. On the other hand,  however, it is also clear that it cannot disappear from the liturgy and that its presence can be an altogether special way of participation in the sacred celebration, in the mystery of the faith.

If we think of the liturgy celebrated by Saint John Paul II on every continent, we see all the breadth of the expressive possibilities of the faith in the liturgical event; and we also see how the great music of the Western tradition is not foreign to the liturgy, but is born and grows from it and in this way contributes ever again to give it form. We do not know the future of our culture and of sacred music. However, there is something that seems clear to me: where there is really an encounter with the living God who comes to us in Christ, born and growing there again is the answer, whose beauty comes from truth itself.

The activity of the two universities that confer on me – that have conferred on me – this Doctorate Honoris Causa – for which I can say again my wholehearted thank you – represents an essential contribution so that the great gift of music, which comes from the tradition of the Christian faith, may remain alive and be of help in order that the creative force of faith is not extinguished also in the future. For this, I thank you all wholeheartedly, not only for the honor that you have bestowed on me, but also for all the work you carry out at the service of the beauty of the faith. May the Lord bless you all.

Monday 6 July 2015

Traditional Mass at Holywell


I was at the LMS annual Pilgrimage to St Winifride's Well in North Wales yesterday, acting as subdeacon, along with Fr Edmund Montgomery from Shrewsbury Cathedral (deacon) and Fr Richard Bailey (celebrant) from the Oratorian Community at St Chad's in Manchester. The Well is a wonderful shrine, not least because of how ancient it is.  The Brigittine Sisters at the now very smart Guest House supplied us with a much needed High Tea afterwards. Lovely music that lifted the heart. A splendid sermon from Fr Bailey on the virgines fatuae and the virgines prudentes, encouraging us to be among the prudent rather than the fatuous, of course.

My thanks for the many photographs courtesy (and copyright) of Mike Barnsdall, showing the Mass and the Procession to the Well, along with the Veneration of the Relic.












Saturday 4 July 2015

First Church in UK for the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter


It has now been publicly announced that St Mary's Church in Warrington is to be looked after by the FSSP - the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter. 

Archbishop Malcolm McMahon

From the St Mary's Church website:

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE ARCHBISHOP REGARDING THE FUTURE OF ST MARY’S
“I have invited the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter to come to the archdiocese and to have responsibility for St Mary’s Church, Warrington. In due course this will become a centre for the celebration of the extraordinary form of Mass and the sacraments. The priests of this fraternity will not, however, assume pastoral responsibility for St Mary’s parish, which will be the responsibility of Fr David Heywood [soon to be PP of the neighbouring parishes] from September.”


St Mary's is a fine church with a strong and intact musical tradition. The church was designed by E. W. Pugin and its construction started in 1875, just before Pugin's death. It was completed by Peter Paul Pugin in 1877. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner considered it to be one of their best churches.



It was looked after by the Ampleforth Benedictines until 2012, It is in a good site, right in the centre of Warrington town centre, which is a particular help for any church without a geographical territory.  Great news for the FSSP, as they have a number of English vocations and until now have been based only in their house in Reading, with access for Mass to the local church.  I know some of their excellent priests and visited their seminary in 2012.  May the Lord bless this new venture in the Archdiocese of Liverpool.  It is now the third church in the Northwest to be given over to the Mass and Sacraments celebrated in the Traditional Form of the Roman Rite.  The Institute in New Brighton in Shrewsbury Diocese and the Institute in Preston in Lancaster Diocese are about forty minutes driving time in opposite directions from Warrington.