Best wishes ...

... to all readers on this joyously triumphalist Feast of Christ our King; but especially brother priests. I wonder if, like me, you find the Breviary propers provided by Pius XI quite exhilarating. Not least the extracts from Quas primas.

Not everybody knows this: while the Novus Ordo dumps the important bits of the Pius XI Collect for Christ the King, the Church of England retains it in a faithful and elegant translation. Perhaps the C of E was a little more faithful to the Vatican II mandate that liturgical changes should only be made if "vera et certa utilitas Ecclesiae id exigat", as well as to the admirable directions of Liturgiam authenticam with regard to the style of liturgical vernaculars.

Today's Sunday Slot on the Home Service seemed to be preoccupied with Martin Luther instead of with Christ the King. They had even sent some Anglican bishop to Wittenberg, presumably at the licence-payer's expense (I didn't leave the wireless on long enough to find out whether the Right Reverend gentleman went round the town setting fire to synagogues as instructed by the fraterculus). Suddenly there came into my mind the powerful words of Blessed John Henry Newman, when he protested formally in 1841 against the Jerusalem Bishopric scheme:
" ... the recognition of heresy, indirect as well as direct, goes far to destroy" the claims "of any religious body ..." and "Lutheranism and Calvinism are heresies, repugnant to Scripture, springing up three centuries since, and anathematised by East as well as by West ...".

It is surely the duty of Ordinariate Catholics never to let their fellow Catholics forget the teachings and counsels of Newman, so directly relevant to the errors of this twenty first century. This is what we are for!!!