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A Path Back to Liturgical Sanity Whether they realize it or not, the Mass with which most Catholics are familiar, the one said in almost all Catholic Churches in the Western Hemisphere, is called the Novus Ordo, or more colloquially, the "new Mass." Many older Catholics may remember the Tridentine Mass, sometimes referred to as "the old Latin Mass," or the "Traditional Latin Mass (TLM)." More and more, however, young people are discovering the beauty of the Mass as it was known for hundreds of years before the wreckovation that occurred after Vatican II. While the Novus Ordo is a...

The Anglican Use Blog has news of two new AU groups forming in the state of Pennsylvania. For those in the Lehigh Valley comes this piece from the newsletter of the St. Thomas More Society in Scranton, PA: Just last evening I received a telephone call from Msgr. Francis Nave, Pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Bath, Northampton County, in the Diocese of Allentown. Msgr. Nave was appointed by Bishop John Barres, Bishop of Allentown, as his liaison to the group of Anglicans from the Lehigh Valley that the St. Thomas More Society has been aiding in their...

Church of England General Synod to touch off an exodus by approving women bishops YORK, England - "There can be no future for Christianity in Europe without Rome," an Anglican bishop told the Sunday Telegraph this weekend, after it was revealed that a group of "senior" bishops from the Church of England has been in secret negotiations with the highest levels of the Vatican to discuss the current crisis in Anglicanism over the acceptance of homosexuality and female bishops. Bishops from both the Church of England's "evangelical" or protestant and "high" or "Catholic" wings are said to have been involved...

The St Thomas More Society AU group in Scranton will be received into the Catholic Church on October31 at 7PM at St Clare's Church in Scranton, Pa.

Biographical introductionI’m very grateful for the opportunity of speaking at this Conference because it’s also an opportunity to set in order my own thoughts, and recent experiences, on the important subject that engages us, particularly in my own country, England, but not only there. ... The question of an Anglican Uniate churchThe question of an Anglican Uniate church is the question of whether all this – or most of it, or, at any rate, a significant part of it, could be preserved in a union, nonetheless, with Rome – not through absorption by the modern Latin-rite church in England or...

Bishop James Timlin and others say the Rev. Christopher Clay was entitled to resume ministerial duties when no criminal charges resulted from a young man's accusations against him. The former Diocese of Scranton bishop said he offered Clay local parish work in 2003 after a police investigation yielded no charges. But that word apparently hasn't reached the Diocese of Forth Worth in Texas, where Clay this week was barred from saying Mass because church officials say they have no proof he's in good standing. Clay until recently assisted his close friend, the Rev. Allan Hawkins, at St. Mary the Virgin...

The Anglican Use liturgy

Today the Anglican bishops in London basically punted on the homo clergy issue. A "commission" will look at the issue - - as if the Bible wasn't already clear. For those Episcopalians who can't bear to go back to church - - but who treasure the liturgy they grew up with -- why ishn't the Roman Catholic Church making more of a marketing effort to win them over? There's a special liturgy that includes elements of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer - under a special papal dispensation. But only a handful of churches - mostly in Texas -- use...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas - Picture a Roman Catholic parish where the priest celebrates Mass facing away from the congregation, where the prayers sound like Elizabethan English and the pastor is married with five children. You're in the Church of Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, Texas, the first parish in the United States established to accommodate Episcopalians who become Catholic and want to keep certain liturgical and cultural traditions. A pastoral provision issued in 1980 by the Vatican permitted the ordination of married men who were priests in the Episcopal church and allowed for a special adaptation of...

My Priest Fr. Christopher G. Phillips of Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church in San Antonio, TX will be the guest on The Journey Home on EWTN tonight August 12th at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central. He was the first Priest ordained under the Pastoral Provision which allowed for certain married clergy of other faiths to become Roman Catholic Priests, and for the establishment of Anglican Use Parishes in the Roman Catholic Church. He recently celebrated the Anglican Use Mass at Mother Angelica's Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, AL. He has also been featured on past EWTN specials,...