Books

"Anglicans and Catholics in Communion: Patrimony, Unity, Mission" is a splendid book - it even contains a piece by me - put together by Fr Mark Woodruff and published as No 292 of the Messenger of the Catholic League (an organisation founded by the legendary Fr Fynes Clinton and always unambiguously papalist; I remember, in my teens during the mid-1950s, a feeling of satisfaction as I signed up to the decrees of Trent and of Vatican I on joining it). A fat book; papers by Bishop Peter Elliott, Cardinal Levada, Fr Aidan NIchols, Mgr Gianfranco Ghirlanda, Benedict XVI, and some thirty others. You can find the Catholic League at www.unitas.org.uk This is a must-read for anybody seriously interested in the concept of repatriating the Anglican Patrimony to the Roman Unity.

"Common Worship Times and Seasons: President's Edition for Holy Communion Order 1".
No, don't buy this one. Incredible, isn't it, that a liturgical tradition which began with Dr Cranmer cramming everything into one volume that was at once Missale and Portiforium and Manuale and Pontificale and Processionale, now expects you to buy two large volumes if you wish simply to have 'presidential' texts for just the Eucharist in just one of its sets of options. How these liturgical committeemen love dreaming up tarty bits of high churchery.

Divertingly, the flyer shows a page-spread with "The Dismissal Gospel". Yes! "This may be done either before or after the Blessing". John 1:1-14! I've stopped taking a serious interest in what fancy services the General Synod authorises; perhaps readers still embedded in the C of E can tell me whether "New Presidential Material" such as Last Gospels has any Synodical authority, or whether it is another example of the dodge of publishing things "commended by the House of Bishops" but which are in fact, on a tight reading of Canon Law, illegal.