On the 28th of June 1971, that is, Monday, Father Peter John Morgan thanks God for his GOLDEN JUBILEE.
Father Peter was the first priest whom His Excellency Archbishop Lefebvre ordained for the Society of S Pius X.
I have known him for two decades; and have learned a great deal from the friendship of those twenty years. I gather that during the 1970s he was wonderfully energetic and successful in setting up Mass Centres for the Old and Authentic celebration of the Roman Rite throughout England; Bishop Tissier writes about him with much appreciation in his Biography of the Archbishop.
Father: AD MULTOS ANNOS! May your priestly ministry continue to bear great fruit in the sight of the Lord!
I heard (probably from one of his enemies, when I was in a SSPX seminary, that he was know as "eminence grise" - not that I hold that against him in any way - I don't know the backstory, so as far as I'm concerned, he's "kosher".
ReplyDeleteP.S.: If I could re-iterate my previous request re a certain lady at your University, if you could remember my intentions in the Memento of the Living. Circumstances outside my control have intervened, and this situation is really hard for me.
AvB.
I remember very well about thirty years ago, a fairly strict member of the congregation at the Oxford Traditional Mass centre saying "You can say what you like about Fr Morgan............but we should be very thankful to him for all that he did starting and setting up the English Mission for the old rite".
ReplyDeleteOne of the greatest red pills for me out of the current pontificate is has been the vindication of the SSPX. Not so much because of the Holy Father's...qualities...as Pope, but because:
ReplyDelete- Pope Francis has granted the SSPX priests permanent faculties to hear confessions, grant absolution and witness marriages, thus sweeping away with the stroke of a pen one of my biggest objections to them. Once I asked myself why, in light of this, I continued to stay away, I couldn't come up with an answer. (Fr. Z's articles on their status also helped.)
- The utter bankruptcy of the modernist experiment within the Church, from the loss of belief in the Real Presence, to the sex abuse crises to the failures of clergy validly to baptize babies who later grew up to become invalidly ordained priests, and culminating with the Church's response to the latest virus crisis, is on full display under a "spirit of Vatican II" Pope. Archbishop Lefebvre was proven right that the traditional Mass had never been abrogated, and he has been proven right in his fears for what the modernist experiment would do to the Church/
In short, I have come to realize under this pontificate that it is not Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX who are the rebels and revolutionaries, but those men in the hierarchy who tried to remake the Church into something unrecognizable, and thereby created the situation that Lefebvre felt he had to respond to. Thank God for the SSPX's firm and uncompromising stand in the face of the storms that have battered the Church, and for the priests that have sacrificed so much to keep the faith alive.
Congratulations to Fr Morgan!!
ReplyDeleteAnother of his many achievements was to see the need for a traditional Ordo Recitandi and was responsible for it being published in 1973. Back in those happy days 1962 was absolutely not the flavour of the month.
Fr Morgan kindly gave me his own copies of the 1973 Ordo (in three parts) and the two successive years.
A very talented, knowledgeable, affable, kind man and a friend ad multos annos!
I wish I had kept those old copies of the Ordo with that old style type-written look.
ReplyDeleteI wish that I had kept old copies of Magnificat, a liturgical magazine edited by the great directress of one of the earliest (Old Rite) Mass centres in England at Farndon Road,Oxford - Miss Kathleen Pond (translator of the St John of the Cross and other Spanish mystics).
In those days there was just so many leaflets, periodicals and magazines - too many to keep. I wonder if there is an archive of the history of the English Mission ?
And what about the huge poster advertising the old Rite designed by Gavin Stamp in purple,gold and white in the style of Martin Travers which was displayed in underground and railways stations - referring to Miss Renold and Fr Morgan's Society of St Pius V.
Fr Morgan, was indeed a popular and able priest, focused on the revival of the old Liturgy.
@Shaun,
ReplyDeleteThe design on the cover of the Ordo from 1986 onwards was also designed by Gavin Stamp. He was a friend of our late chair, Ronald Warwick, from Cambridge. When the SSPX stopped publishing the Ordo in 1983 the cover for the 1984 edition, the Arms of John-Paul II, caused upset in some quarters. 1985 had plain cover and Ronald asked Gavin Stamp to help which he kindly did.