“A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken Him?” – Pope Pius Xll
‘Anything that divides must be cut away': the TLM ends in Blackfen!
I come to bury the Mass, not to praise it!
What is difficult to convey, and may sound uncharitable, but is necessary to make sense of the situation, is the attitude of hostility towards the Traditional Mass and those Catholics attached to it which Fr Fisher from the first radiated…
Rorate readers will by now know the sad fate of the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary in Blackfen, in the south east of Greater London. With the blogging priest Fr Timothy Finigan as pastor, the parish had become famous as a centre for the Traditional liturgy. On the second Sunday of his successor, Fr Steven Fisher, it was announced that the Traditional Mass would no longer be celebrated in the parish, effective from the end of the month. In order to understand this event, readers need to bear in mind a number of facts. One is the poisonous article on the parish in 2009, which appeared in the Tablet, the British liberal Catholic weekly. In this a number of long-standing liberal dissidents who, unfortunately for the parish, live within its boundaries, queued up to attack Fr Finigan for introducing the Traditional Mass into the parish schedule: despite the fact that three of the four Sunday celebrations continued to be the Novus Ordo. They were led by Bernard Wynne, quoted in theTabletarticle, a leading member of ‘Advent Group’, which campaigns against priestly celibacy, ‘Catholics for a Changing Church’, founded to opposeHumanae Vitae, and the more recently formed ‘Stand Up for Vatican II’. When people like Bernard Wynne stir up problems in a parish, periodicals like the Tablet can always be found to blame the priest for being too orthodox and the other laity for being attached to the Traditional Mass. The article has left a cloud of suspicion hanging over the parish among the establishment liberals who allow their prejudices to be formed by the Tablet.
In actual fact, worshippers at the Traditional Mass in Blackfen were perfectly integrated into the parish. They supported parish events and parish fundraising, and by the time Fr Finigan left they were long established as the largest congregation at any of the four Sunday Masses.
The other thing readers need to understand, is that Fr Finigan’s replacement arrived with everyone, apparently including Archbishop Peter Smith, expecting him to continue to celebrate the Traditional Mass in the parish. It was widely known that Fr Fisher could, and on occasion, had, celebrated the Traditional Mass in his former parish. Fr Finigan had prepared the Faithful for the transition by assuring them that the Masses would continue. On his first Sunday in the parish, Fr Fisher did indeed celebrate a Missa Cantata as usual. But that is also when the problems started.
His sermon included these passages (emphasis added):
“Every activity we carry out together in the parish must be for the purpose of drawing us together in unity. Anything that divides must be cut away, to make way for that which unites. Only united can we show to the community around us what it truly means to be Catholic in the 21st century. … We can sit down together and start drawing up a plan and a vision for the future to bring about the vision of Vatican II and make this a strong, vibrant parish in the modern world.”
“People from outside the parish also come to Mass here, and we must be welcoming to them. They are not part of our community in quite the same way – they have their own proper parishes – but we must ensure they feel just as welcome when they come here as do people who live in the area coming for the first time.”
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