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...

Words and Music

PASSIONTIDE SERVICE 
OF 
WORDS AND MUSIC

A meditation on the Passion of Christ.

Music by Victoria, Caldara, Pergolesi and Bach.

Sung by the Westland Singers directed by Paul Dewhirst

Service ends with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament

St Joseph`s Church, High West Street, Gateshead

March 20^th at 7pm

Iam enim hiems transiit; imber abiit, et recessit. Flores apparuerunt in terra nostra

Or maybe not. Unlike recent years we`ve had a normal winter instead of the very mild ones that were becoming the norm. However even though there is snow forecast for next Thursday, March 1st, it`s time to come out of hibernation and start a bit of blogging.

So for a start, this item from Pathe News cheered me up.






Good to see the house still survives. I imagine life is somewhat different now.

Candlemas

There will be a Missa Cantata for the feast of Candlemas this Friday, February 2nd at 7pm.

I was looking for a picture but a search on Google images for Candlemass was quite a surprise. Candlemas produces less alarming results. My mistake.

Christmas Masses

Christmas vigil Mass at St Joseph`s and at St Wilfrid`s will be at 5pm on Christmas Eve preceded by carols from 4.30pm. There will be a Latin Midnight Mass and English Mass at 10am on Christmas Day at St Joseph`s.

Young Catholics

I haven`t seen any reaction to the report in the Catholic Herald about young Catholics in advance of the next Synod of bishops in October in Rome on the theme of "Youth, Faith and Vocational Discernment` but I thought it was significant. We were asked to encourage our young parishioners to respond to a questionnaire about the Church in preparation for the Synod. I must confess I did very little about it having lost most of my enthusiasm for being consulted after a rather long process in our own diocese over the last three years which I started on with some optimism but that disappeared when the final outcome and report was much as I might have expected before the whole thing started.

However to my surprise the report from the Bishops of England and Wales (which I can find nowhere apart from this article in the Catholic Herald ) instead of coming up with the expected responses seems to have actually noticed what is going on. The CH headline is `Young Catholics `either nostalgic or progressive``. I never thought I`d see the day when a report on Catholic Youth didn`t conclude that what was needed to keep young people at Mass was more balloons and people in leotards hopping around the altar. It seems Juventutem and Faith and others have finally been noticed. Does this mean our Youth Village may soon host a day of reflection led by the Institute of Christ the King? That the Youth Mission Team may start classes on Gregorian chant? 

The artice says the bishops have discovered that `There are two groups of young Catholics: those who want to return to a previous era, and those who think the Church should follow current social trends`. Admittedly the first group is much smaller than the second but I`d bet it produces a far higher proportion of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, to the dismay of some vocations` directors.

Well I look forward to seeing the report. I may even begin to offer my opinion occasionally when asked.

Advent Service

Often the complaint is heard that Christmas starts in Novembewr and Advent has disappeared. I do find my self intrigued by the Christmas cakes and puddings that have been on sale in Tesco since October wondering who buys them then. However to give people a chance to soak up some of the themees of Advent we will be having an Advent service with hymns, choral items from the Westland Singers and readings on Tuesday 12th December. The service will end with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Retiring collection for Aid to the Church in Need. All welcome and the new heating system is working very well.

Prayers

Please remember Fr Gary Dickson, (of the Catholic Collar and Tie blog) in your prayers. He is seriously ill. Updates on his condition can be found on the blog here. Fr Dickson has been retired a while through ill health. Many in Hexham and Newcastle and beyond know him as a man of principle and courage.

While I`m here Fr Jim Doherty is also in need of prayers. At 91 he had been retired in the presbytery in St Robert`s Morpeth (in the rooms I had as a curate there) for sixteen years. He was still helping out with Sunday and weekday Mass and kept things going when the previous parish priest, Fr Lawrence Jones, was dying of cancer in the presbytery a few years ago. In May he sustained brain damage after being hit by a car while out for a walk and is struggling to recover. 

Going Forward in Hope

UPDATE: 16.11.17 The Tablet reports on the Mass in Leeds cathedral. My favourite quote from the article is from Bishop Stock:

He told The Tablet he chose to learn the Mass in the Extraordinary Form because: "It’s important that I try to be a father to everyone in my Diocese."

Thank you Bishop Stock!

SOLEMN PONTIFICAL MASS OF

REQUIEM

 

offered by His Lordship the Bishop of Leeds

Bishop Marcus Stock

on

SATURDAY 11^TH. NOVEMBER 2017

at

3.00 P.M.

ST. ANN’S CATHEDRAL COOKRIDGE STREET, LEEDS

for

the repose of the souls of his  predecessors

Bishops   Cornthwaite, Gordon, Poskitt,  Heenan,  Dwyer,  Wheeler &  Konstant