Monday, November 1, 2010

Feast of Christ the King

Yesterday at St Joseph's in Gateshead we celebrated the feast of Christ the King with Missa Cantata celebrated by our parish priest, Fr Adrian Dixon. We used a beautiful new set of gold vestments made by parishioner Margaret Barnes. The Proper and Ordinary were sung by our own schola and at the end of Mass we sang the 'Te Deum' in thanks for our priests and to honour our God and King. We did this as we are entering a month of fund raising for the Priests' Training Fund. Our bishop's letter must have been written before the sad decision to close Ushaw College was made as he looked forward confidently to the future. As this feast followed the Feast of the Blessed Douai Martyrs it was poignant that just as we are aiming to educate and train future priests we are closing Ushaw which follows so closely in the footsteps of Douai where so many of our English priests were trained for a mission that led only to hardship and martyrdom for so many of them. We should pray that in some way Ushaw will be brought back from the precipice and be taken on by those who still believe in the future of the Church.
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3 comments:

  1. 1569 RisingNovember 2, 2010 at 10:42 PM

    David and Theresa,

    This is where I get into trouble, so can I say that the following comments are mine alone, and are not meant to reflect IN ANY WAY the views of the LMS....

    I was very surprised that His Lordship did not make some reference in his Pastoral Letter launching the Priests' Training Fund to what must be the most important decision for Catholics in many decades - the closure of the very Seminary which was paid for and supported by Catholics through the self same PTF.

    In addition, I notice that the Pastoral Letter has still not appeared on the Diocesan web site at the time of writing, (Tuesday evening).

    I wonder if someone from the Diocesan Chancellery could enlighten us as to the very strange omission from the Pastoral Letter?

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  2. David O'NeillNovember 4, 2010 at 2:32 PM

    Dear 1569
    The comment was passed on Sunday (prior to Mass) that the letter had been composed prior to the decision - or at least the announcement -that Ushaw was to be closed & sold.

    ReplyDelete
  3. 1569 RisingNovember 4, 2010 at 2:56 PM

    Dear David,

    Of course I was very wrong. It was obviously not possible to add a couple of paragraphs to a 2-page letter and make c.150 photocopies in the 5 weeks since the announcement. It also must take many days to place the letter on the web site.

    Photocopiers do take weeks to print anything, you can't get decent goose feathers to make quills and 2nd class post takes eons.

    I had better stop, my cynicism is becoming too overwhelming, and I may get into trouble.

    (The above views are my own personal opinions, and do not reflect the position of the LMS.)

    ReplyDelete

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