Queen Elizabeth and the Great Silence
Above: 1965, Queen Elizabeth II sits in a carriage during the Opening of Parliament, Queens royal procession. My silence is no proof of malice, as his Majesty can well know by many other tokens, nor is it shown to be any disapproval of your law. Indeed it should be taken rather as a mark of…
La tradition, c’est moi
When Pope Francis issued a motu proprio called Traditionis Custodes on 16 July 2021, an edict severely restricting the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, it marked the culmination of the growing official hostility towards the Apostolic Roman Rite (hitherto referred to as the ‘extraordinary form’ of the liturgy). This term, which had been invented by Francis’ predecessor, Benedict…
Integralism: a European Perspective
Photo: the sacralised baroque cityscape of Salzburg, Austria. I was recently ensconced in one of the last all-male environments permitted in contemporary society – a barbershop – and, as I had my haircut, the free-wheeling conversation inexorably turned to the current COVID episode and from there to the wider Western crisis. After my barber voiced…
Byzantine Thomism and the True Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue: “Breathing with Both Lungs”
One of the many encouraging signs in the Traditionalist ‘movement’ today is the growing understanding that the contemporary crisis in the Catholic Church does not simply originate in the neo-Modernist recrudescence of the 1940s to the 1960s, nor in the original Modernist wave of the 1900s that St Pius X fought against, but in fact…
The Beauty of the Virgin Mary and the History of Art
Art and the Female Principle Other than Our Lord Jesus Christ there has been no more frequent subject in Western figurative art than the Blessed Virgin Mary. If the object of the arts, when rightly ordered, is beauty, then it is fitting that the inspiration of so much Western material and musical culture be the…
England and Wales Respond to the Motu Proprio
Each year the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales organises a High Mass at England’s neo-Byzantine mother church, Westminster Cathedral, to coincide with its Annual General Meeting. This year’s High Mass on the Vigil of the Assumption was as majestic and liturgically sumptuous as ever, with a possibly record attendance of 350 – 400…