23 October: Bp. Egan of @PortsmouthRC calls for Masses of Reparation

When His Lordship the Right Reverend Philip Egan was installed as Bishop of Portsmouth in England, I was in London.  I fondly recall watching a live stream of the event with not-yet-Fr  James Bradley of the Ordinariate in digs at St. Patrick’s, Soho Square.  This Egan, I thought, is a solid guy.  He sermon was terrific.  I also mentally congratulated my friend “Trisagion” repeatedly as I watched.

Today I read at Fr. Hunwick’s place that Bp Egan… well… here’s Fr. H’s own:

The admirable Lord Bishop of the diocese in which I am domiciled (although, of course, I am incardinated in the Ordinariate) has asked his priests and people to observe October 23 as a day of Reparation for the babies killed since the Abortion Act was passed in this country on that day in the year 1967. He asks clergy to use the Votive (NO) for the Progress of Peoples and to wear the purple vestments of penance.

[NB] He suggests, for that day, fasting since midnight the night before Communion and making use of silence at Mass. He particularly suggests that the Offertory Prayers be said secreto. Nice points.

Admirable. I feel strongly inclined to clamber on board his initiative. I wonder which EF Votive one might use … Salus Populi, perhaps?

An admirable undertaking indeed.  More HERE

In the Extraordinary Form… what to do? 

Honestly, it would be great if bishops would remember the EF when doing these things and also, simultaneously provide for it.

One might argue for various Votive Masses in the Vetus Ordo for such an intention.   For example, you could choose the prayers

  • Ad petendam compunctionem cordis
  • Pro tentatis et tribulatis

 

Also, provided in the PSPAL section there is on 23 October a Mass “Sanctissimi Redemptoris” with a lovely formulary and one which is at the same time sober and hopeful.  And, if the bishop would want purple on it, then put purple on it instead of white.  Why not?  (Yes, yes…. Mass of Our Lord, white and all that.  But…..)

Reparation, my dear friends, reparation.

The Present Crisis, which is rooted in homosexual predators in the clergy and the sodoclericalists who abet them, is in a sense the obverse of the abortion and culture of death crisis we are living.  Both abortion and homosexual acts thwart in the most brutal way God’s plan for human sexuality.  Both bring the attachment of demons to where they take place.   Satan’s plan from the temptation in the garden was to overturn God’s plan for creation.  What better ways than through abortion and homosexual acts.

William Blake might have been referring factories of the Industrial Revolution when in Jerusalem he penned the poignant picture of “dark satanic mills”, but we have perfected them in the modern culture of death with big-business, industrial scale abortion and the “gay” movement.

We need mighty tools to combat these rotten fruits.

In Blake’s other, longer Jerusalem he wrote:

“And all the Arts of Life they changed into the Arts of Death in Albion.”

Yes, I think the Mass Sanctissimi Redemptoris might be aptum et pulchrum on 23 October.

Salvo meliore iudicio.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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2 Comments

  1. Grateful to be Catholic says:

    I have also heard that “dark satanic mills” refers to the universities that where becoming unhinged from their religious origins and embracing scientific positivism and secularism.

  2. Simon_GNR says:

    A priest of my acquaintance was at seminary with Bishop Philip Egan and assures me that Egan is one of the “good guys”, one of the newer, younger bishops who is more orthodox and traditional than the previous generation of bishops, many of whom were/are too concerned with doing nothing to offend the atheist, materialist, secular society that now holds sway in Britain. Bishop Egan seems prepared to “say boo to a goose”! I have hopes he might be the next Archbishop of Westminster. Cardinal Vincent Nichols reaches 75 in just over two years, so it is quite possible.

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