PRESS RELEASE FROM THE LATIN MASS SOCIETY

For Immediate Release

8 October 2007

Triumphant Motu Proprio Mass and Te Deum at Westminster Cathedral

The Latin Mass Society celebrated Pope Benedict’s recent Motu Proprio guaranteeing the Traditional Liturgy’s place in the Church’s life with a Votive High Mass of the Holy Spirit and Te Deum in Westminster Cathedral on Saturday 6 October. The cathedral was crowded with several hundred worshippers. The Cathedral Special Choir sang Mozart’s Coronation Mass.

Monsignor Vincent Brady, Secretary to the Papal Nuncio, was present in choir.

The Celebrant was Revd Fr Antony Conlon, National Chaplain of the LMS. In his sermon, Fr Conlon noted that Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio was the culmination of work already begun in the later years of Pope John Paul II’s pontificate. He pointed to the forty years of liturgical uncertainty and confusion which had followed the post-Vatican II liturgical changes. He likened John Paul II to Moses who attained sight of the Promised Land, but Benedict XVI to Joshua who actually took possession of the land and consolidated the gain. There was still much to do to re-educate Catholics in the spirituality of the Mass but Fr Conlon quoted Cardinal Reginald Pole’s words preached 450 years ago in 1557 lamenting that, “the discipline of ceremonies... hath been utterly cast out.” However, men cannot live without them. “Of the observation of ceremonies beginneth the education of the children of God.” With the restoration of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, such a time was now upon us.

John Medlin, General Manager of the LMS said, “We offer our grateful thanks to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor for permitting the Mass and Mgr Mark Langham, the Cathedral Administrator, whose staff did so much to make us feel welcome.”

The LMS returns to Westminster Cathedral on Saturday 17 November at 2.00 pm when its annual High Mass of Requiem will be celebrated by Bishop John Arnold of Westminster. Bishop John will thus become the first bishop of England and Wales to celebrate the Traditional Mass in Westminster Cathedral since the liturgical changes of 1970.

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Sermon by Father Antony Conlon can be found here.

A full set of photos of the Mass at Westminster Cathedral can be found on the traditionalcatholic.org.uk web site.

For further information, please contact John Medlin, General Manager, or Yvonne Windsor, LMS Office Administrator, on (T) 020 7404 7284; (F) 020 7831 5585;

E-mail: thelatinmasssociety@snmail.co.uk