9 October 2009

Ave atque Vale

What fun to see S Alyoggers during yesterday's stay by S Therese. Large devout crowds; clergymen wedged in corners hearing confessions; the queues approaching the reliquary to venerate; the tinkle of bells from low masses at side altars. It reminded me of places like Walsngham, before the post-Conciliar ruptures; and of Mr Newman's words
This is popular religion ... how wonderful that people call this worship formal and external; it seems to possess all classes, young and old, polished and vulgar, men and women indiscriminately; it is the working of one Spirit in all, making many one. And he contrasted it with Anglican worship as it was before the Catholic Revival, in which "the clergyman or the organ was everything and the people nothing, except so far as the clerk is their representative; here everything was just reversed".

Incidentally, a very good sermon by the pp, Fr Seward; elegant, literate, and moving.

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