The Triduum

MAUNDY  THURSDAY  St  Wilfrid`s  7pm  Mass  of  the  Lord`s  Supper:  Joint Mass of English and Polish communities. Watching until 10pm. 

GOOD FRIDAY St Joseph`s. 11am Stations of the Cross
3pm Commemoration of the Lord`s Passion. 

HOLY SATURDAY St Joseph`s: Confessions 12-12.30pm
Easter Vigil Mass 6pm

EASTER SUNDAY
St Wilfrid`s Mass 9.30am;  St Joseph`s: Latin Mass 12 noon ( Missa Cantata: Music by Westland singers)

The Pope on tattoos.

Pope Francis has been speaking about the usefulness of tattoos. The Telegraph reports:

At a meeting with young people ahead of an upcoming Synod of Catholic bishops, Pope Francis told them "don't be afraid of tattoos".
Answering a question from a Ukranian student priest about how to respond to present-day culture, the pope told his audience of around 300 young people that tattoos were not necessarily a bad thing.
He mentioned cultural examples where tattoos have been a symbol of religious faith, such as in Eritrea, where it used to be common for Christian girls to have a tattoo of a cross on their foreheads as a symbol of beauty.

This will be good news to Gary who runs the tattoo shop just across the road from St Joseph`s as I`m sure he would be pleased to have papal approval and encouragement. A couple of the staff from the shop rent car parking spaces from the church so I`ll be sure to let them know what the Pope has said.

It may mean more work for me too. As someone who is supposed to know something about Latin the most common request I get for my help is to translate mottos people want as part of their tattoo into Latin. It`s an interesting phenomenon: I presume having it in Latin seems to give it an authority and timelessness that English lacks..

A parishioner asks :

Are you going to arrange a job-lot for parishioners with the tattoo parlour across the road?

Will there be reduced rates for clergy?

A very interesting book of Ushaw

I don`t know how to copy tweets but yesterday the Ushaw library twitter account featured a fascinating book. A Sarum missal of 1527. The tweet reads:
 It is annotated with notes recording how the Mass was banned under Edward VI in 1548, restored under Queen Mary &banned again in 1558-59. ‘The chalice of the Devil’ &the ‘Anti-Christ is being Adored’ has been written on an image of a Papal Mass.

Here are the pictures via a screenshot, although I think I read that they disappear after 14 days. 

 

 

The talk was fascinating although sadly I only heard the last 20 minnutes as the laptop needed to have PoweerPoint installed so Alistair could show his pictures and I missed most of the talk while I was installing it. April 4th for the next talk on James II.

The Books of Ushaw

The North East Catholic History Society lecture season resumes tomorrow here in the parish hall with a talk by Alistair Fraser on The Books of Ushaw at 2pm. I`m looking forward to this very much as the contents of the Big Library have always intrigued me: I would have loved to have been let loose in it when I was at Ushaw.  There is now a Twitter page for the Ushaw Library which features the contents of this remarkable collection. I`m proud to have once borrowed books from the Big Library a number of years ago, thanks to Fr Milburn, when I was preparing my talk for the Society on The Recusants and the Sarum Rite. 

 Ushaw`s copy of Henry VIII’s Defence of the Seven Sacraments (1521) for which the Pope gave Henry the title ‘Defender of the Faith’



Short notice I know but if you are nearby it should be an interesting talk.

The next talk will be on 4 April when  Prof. John Derry, will speak on James ll — The King who lost Three Kingdoms.

Ego Scriba

We are lucky at St Joseph`s in that Andrew, our MC, has a gift for calligraphy which he employs to create beautiful things for the church. He made a set of altar cards  and has more recently produced the prayer for the Asperges. He is working on transcribing the Gospel of John in Carolingian minuscule at the minute.

I mention this because he also has started a blog which may be of interest to readers. Here you will see which projects he is working on and some examples of the work. Today he has a post on the violent rabbits of the Middle Ages which is well worth a look. There`s a little bit about ladies throwing foxes at each other too if rabbits aren`t exciting enough.

Lizzie

The Catholic Herald this week features Lizzie on its cover. She is an American You Tube celebrity with 180,000 followers who has announced her conversion to the Catholic faith after being a life-long member of a protestant denomination The Church of Christ. Here is one of her earlier contributions on her experience of the Extraordinary Form. Although her style may jar somewhat, she talks very quickly, and her grasp of history is a bit vague at times, I found this interesting and worth a look. Still waiting to hear about the H & N  Youth Mission Team catering for young people like these...