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Showing posts from January, 2018

St. Thomas and St. Augustine (and Dr. Arias) illuminate our understanding of the Lord's Prayer.

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Wikipedia/Tissot/The Lord's Prayer An excerpt from an article. Edited with/for emphasis. JANUARY 30, 2018 St. Thomas Would Oppose Changing the Lord’s Prayer by David Arias, PhD. https://www.crisismagazine.com/2018/thomas-on-lords-prayer Anthony Esolen , Lionel Yaceckzo and Charlotte Allen , for example, have made it abundantly clear that, “and lead us not into temptation,” is a correct English translation of both the Greek and Latin texts of Matthew 6:13. This is not the end of the matter, though. For, as Esolen eloquently puts it: “The words of Jesus, as words, are clear. Their implications are profound. They are hard for us to fathom. They strike us as strange. That is as it should be. Let them stand.” Here Esolen points to the key distinction between having a good English translation of Matthew 6:13, and having a good understanding of what our Lord teaches us to ask for in the great prayer which he gave us. For the English speaker who knows neither G

In Praise of Little Parishes

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Saint Pauls' Church Saltspring Island, BC Of course, small parishes can and do become large parishes. God's will be done. Little parishes offer spiritual intimacy of a kind that makes for stalwart disciples well-formed in the Catholic Faith. Small parishes have little need for committees, especially liturgy committees. The proper celebration of the Liturgy is the responsibility of the priest. Typically, of course, priests (in the Ordinariate and Extraordinary Form communities) enlist and encourage the help of men and boys as altar servers, and women as members of the altar guild. Little parishes make possible the common knowledge of individual and family needs. It is immediately known among members of a small parish those who need prayer or practical support such as help getting to Mass. Communion, that is fellowship and interdependence, is keenly felt and known and acted upon in small parishes. Why is this so? Small communities depend on God for their identity and

The Beauty of Altar Rails

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photo: http://peregrinacionvirtual.blogspot.ca/2013/05/32-nuestra-senora-de-walsingham_17.html The Beauty of Order Souls need beauty. Beauty is ordered; order is beautiful. Souls need true spiritual structure(s), order, to support a right orientation to God. Communion rails or altar rails, like iconostases and rood screens, provide a focus whereby worshippers, i.e., communicants, can draw near to the Lord in confidence. The rail reminds us that God is above us and yet not distant from us. The altar or communion rail identifies the arena in which the most profound Mystery one can encounter in this life becomes present. When we altar servers approach the sanctuary, we do so by kneeling at the Foot of the Altar. In a sense, we are kneeling at the feet of the Lord. Crossing the Line The altar rail provides a distinction between the profane and the sacred. When a soul has a clear distinction between the sacred and profane to guide them, it is much easier to see where one sh

Manchester Ordinariate Community given parish church.

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H/T David Clayton @ NLM/Way of Beauty "(T)he Bishop of Salford, John Arnold, has very generously offered the (...) Ordinariate a home in his diocese, which is in the north of England." From the MOC Facebook site . Click on Image to Enlarge

Bishop Steven Lopes on Amoris Laetitia

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The Wedding Feast at Cana (1563), by Paolo Veronese If you have not already dined on the cuisine that is Bishop Lope's statement on Amoris Laetitia , and you are not fed up with the whole issue, make the time to engage His Excellency's thoroughly refreshing commentary. https://ordinariate.net/letters-and-statements His Excellency's statement is clear, precise, deep and charitable. It goes without saying that it is orthodox. It is beautiful. A treasure to be shared. + + + An excerpt: The Experience of the Ordinariate Lex orandi, lex credendi — as we worship, so we believe. Those formed in the traditions and rich spiritual heritage of English Christianity well know that liturgy functions as a guide for belief. In the “Divine Worship: Order of Solemnization of Holy Matrimony,” marriage is understood covenantally, as evidenced by the “Nuptial Blessing”: “Send thy blessing upon these thy servants, this man and this woman, whom we bless in thy Name: that

Patrimony?

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1 Samuel 15:22 And Samuel said,  “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,  as in obeying the voice of the Lord?  Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,  and to hearken than the fat of rams. What is the Patrimony that is preserved in and through the Personal Ordinariates of Our Lady of Walsingham, the Chair of Saint Peter, and Our Lady of the Southern Cross? As one who was received into the Catholic Church in 1985, who, after a year-and-a-half association with the Fellowship of Blessed John Henry Newman, has since this past September become a member of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, I happily acknowledge there is, with regards to faith and "the gift to be shared" that is Divine Worship, still so much to learn from the courageous former Anglicans and Anglo-catholics who have entered and continue to enter into communion with the Church that Jesus Christ founded on the Apostle Peter. Said former Anglicans and An

Ordinariate Life. “The lay leadership kept the congregation not only growing, but thriving.”

An article of interest for those interested in the Personal Ordinariate and Divine Worship, the Mass of Ordinariate Catholics. Read the full article by clicking on the link: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/english-catholic-ordinariate-sees-new-opportunities-for-grace-and-growth An excerpt or two: English-Catholic Ordinariate Sees New Opportunities for Grace and Growth by Peter Jesserer Smith WASHINGTON — When Father John Vidal arrived to take charge of the St. Luke’s ordinariate parish in the nation’s capital in October, the community had been without a pastor for three months. But rather than discover a church on hold, waiting for its new clerical leadership, the Catholic priest discovered a ordinariate community that had continued to grow. “The lay leadership kept the congregation not only growing, but thriving,” Father Vidal told the Register. While a priest on loan from the Archdiocese of Washington offered the English-Catholic ordinariate’s

The Composite Order: Part III - Orientation and Transformation

Transforming Sanctuaries; Transforming Perspectives Many, if not most, Ordinariate communities presently worship in borrowed spaces belonging to diocesan Catholic communities; sanctuaries and naves that are commonly shaped more like lecture theatres than cruciform churches. To witness a sanctuary transformed, reoriented (from  versus populum  to  ad orientem ) for the celebration of Holy Mass, is to witness a powerful analogy for a necessary metanoia in a diocesan community that needs the True, the Good and the Beautiful, yet may be inhibited from doing so due to a preoccupation that pits the pragmatic over theological and artistic depth. On any given Sunday morning, during the overlap between the dismissal of an Ordinariate congregation and the arrival of a diocesan host community, as communities rub shoulders as it were, that same diocesan community can witness reminders that a parish church is a holy temple of the living God, a place worthy of solemnity: incense hanging i

Novena for Murray O'Coin

Communities of the Personal Oridnariate of the Chair of Saint Peter are into Day 3 of a Novena of Masses offered for Mr. Murray O'Coin of Christ the King Ordinariate community at the Chapel Royal, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Ontario. Please join your prayers to those of the Ordinariate community for Murray, that he may recover his health. Almighty God, merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, vouchsafe to send forth Thy holy angels to watch over Murray and to protect him from any and all malicious spiritual influences that may be inhibiting his recovery. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, One God, world without end. Amen. Holy Mary, Mother of God: pray for Murray. Blessed John Henry Newman: pray for him.

Altar Server training with the Fellowship of Blessed John Henry Newman.

A week ago Saturday, three boys were accepted into the Guild of Altar Servers after a two-and-a-half hour training session which included: the meaning of ritual gestures: posture; bows and genuflections; hand position. liturgical movement and pacing for four processions: Entrance; Gospel; Sanctus; Dismissal. an introduction to prayers: vesting prayers; sacristy prayers. the character of the altar server and spiritual formation. After the formal part of the training, when the new servers were encouraged to pray for each other, their families and the priests, one of the young lads confidently proclaimed that, "when I become an adult, I will be a priest". His comment was humbling and moved us all deeply. The training session focussed on the Sung (Sunday) Mass and was led by two instituted acolytes and our pastor. All clergy and adult instituted acolytes function in complete compliance with a safe environment policy. All adult supervisors submit to police background

And lead us not into temptation. Patrimonial English.

H/T Deborah Gyapong at Anglicanorum Coetibus Blog Charlotte Allen at First Things has a sage contribution to the conversation regarding the line in the Pater Noster — et ne nos inducas in tentationem — that is lighting up the blogosphere. Allen's article reads in part: The problem, as Anthony Esolen has argued, is that “lead us not” is in fact a faithful translation. Nearly all manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate Bible—the fourth-century text that is baseline Scripture for the Latin-Rite Church—some dating to the very early Middle Ages, have either ne inducas nos or ne nos inducas for the words Jesus used with respect to temptation in both Matthew and Luke. Inducas is the second-person singular present active subjunctive form of inducere , a Latin verb that means, precisely, “to lead in.” Inducas is itself a literal translation of the Greek me eisenenkeis hemas eis peirasmon , found in the very oldest manuscripts of the New Testament ( eisenenkeis is a second-perso

The Personal Ordinariate is for everyone!

Yours truly was raised by a Yorkshire Methodist mother. Initially, mum was raised in the Church of England, the community of one of her parents, but left after a theological argument with the local Anglican vicar. She, still a young teenager, then began attending the local Wesleyan Methodist community of her other parent. Because of its similarity to mum's Wesleyan Methodist community back home, yours truly was raised in a very strait-laced United Church of Canada community of mostly former Methodists—salt of the earth folk. My Sunday School teacher of some five years was Miss Jean Christie, a direct descendant of William Mellis Christie, as in "Mister Christie, you make good cookies!" Miss Christie possessed a quiet and confident faith. Everyone in our town of 900 souls knew and loved Miss Christie. I was received into the Catholic Church in my mid twenties, in 1985. The English "accent" I have discovered among members of our Ordinariate community remi

The Composite Order: Part II

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Divine Worship (Ordinariate Form) - Mount Calvary Church The Composite Order: Part I The Composite Order Part II: Divine Worship Divine Worship: the Missal, promulgated by Pope Francis, was introduced on the First Sunday of Advent, November 29, 2015. By so doing, the Holy Father crowned a unique achievement in the history of the Church, an achievement realizing the intention of Pope Benedict who was ably assisted by Archbishop Di Noia and other faithful sons of the Church, by bringing the Ordinariate Missal to publication and returning liturgical renewal to the letter  and  spirit of the Second Vatican Council. The Ordinariate Mass is the legitimate offspring of a  conversation  between continuity  and  reform that (re-)unites the Anglican Patrimony—that is, the Catholic Patrimony preserved in Anglicanism—with the Latin Patrimony. Divine Worship is more than a collection of liturgical texts and ritual gestures. It is the organic expression of the Church’s own  lex oran

Stephen Bullivant on 'How To Save The English Church'.

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Photo: Giovanni Portelli/The Catholic Weekly N.B. — Dear Bishops of England, please open your hearts and consider offering your vacant parish churches to the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. Just as certain parish church buildings have been given to Extraordinary Form communities , and are thriving, so too the Ordinariate could receive the gift of a parish church and offer to all Catholics in a given area the beauty and goodness of the Ordinariate Mass and the richness of the Ordinariate Catholic experience, an experience that configures to the spirit and letter of the Second Vatican Council. T he Ordinariate can lovingly preserve a building consecrated to the worship of God, a house built by families who offered their time and resources to build and sustain a parish home. The Ordinariate has the priests to help preserve that home for area Catholics. + + + An excerpt from an article by Stephen Bullivant at The Catholic Herald:  How To Save The English Chu
The opinions expressed herein are largely those of the blog author. Every effort is made to conform to Church teaching. Comments are welcome.