Msgr. Gilles Wach, Prior General

The following communiqué was issued from the General House of the Institute of Christ the King:

On the feast of St. Charles Borromeo, November 4, 2014, and in accordance with Article 20 of the Constitutions of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the General Chapter gathered in the presence of Monsignor Patrick Descourtieux of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei at the Motherhouse in Gricigliano in order to elect the Superior General.
The vote elected Monsignor Gilles Wach as Superior General for the next six years.
Let us render thanksgiving to Divine Providence while invoking the intercession of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception so that the Institute may be ever faithful in the service of God’s Holy Church.
Rev. Canon Gilles GuitardSecretary

It is available here from the General House's website and here from the website of the United States Province.

Félicitations Monseigneur!

Latin Mass in the Pro Cathedral, Dublin

With the permission of His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin and the Very Reverend Canon O'Reilly, Adm., St. Laurence's Catholic Heritage Association organised a pilgrimage to the Pro Cathedral, Dublin, today, to honour the feast of St. Laurence O'Toole, Patron of the Archdiocese, and to venerate his relics enshrined there.

The sacristy staff honoured us by laying out for use at the Mass the vestments made for the High Mass in the Phoenix Park at the 1932 Eucharistic Congress in Dublin and the chalice given as a gift by the People of Ireland to St. John XXIII, gifted by him back to the Pro-Cathedral, and used by St. John Paul II at the Mass that he celebrated in the Phoenix Park when he visited Ireland in 1979.

From Dublin: The City Within the Grand and Royal Canals and the Circular Road by Christine Casey, p. 126 ff:

ST. MARY'S PRO-CATHEDRAL

Marlborough Street

Of 1814-25.  A large and remarkably ambitious metropolitan chapel whose style and scale provided an exemplar for Catholic church building in the city for over half a century.  In all but name, this is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Dublin.  It is the parish church of the archbishop and since its dedication in 1825 it has played a central role in national religious ceremony.  The remains of Daniel O'Connell, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera lay here in state; John Henry Newman was inaugurated here as the Rector of the Catholic University; and in 1903 John McCormack began his career here with the renowned Palestrina Choir, founded in the previous year.  At 4,734 square ft (1,320 square metres), it was the largest church built in Dublin since the Middle Ages.  The model was French, in particular the basilican church of St Philippe du Roule in Paris (1764-84), a Neoclassical design with a nave, apse and ambulatory... The Pro-Cathedral design is more fastidiously primitif in its employment of Greek Doric throughout, modulated to Tuscan in the tripartite windows of the s elevation.  'Sublimely Greek by any standards' concluded J.M. Crook, 'pedantic' and 'dogmatic' counters Michael McCarthy, both seeing through the many accretions to the original heroic concept.  While substantial C19 and C20 alterations have considerably reduced the potency of the original design, the Pro-Cathedral still ranks among the most powerful Greek Revival church interiors in these islands...

A Holy and Wholesome Thing...

Mass for Deceased Members

A Mass in the Pro Cathedral Dublin

A Latin Mass to honour Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy

On his feast day, 25th October, members and friends of the Catholic Heritage Association gathered in the (North) Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Anne, Cork City, to honour Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy, the White Martyr of Cork.

Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy pray for us!

A pilgrimage to Cork

A Latin Mass in Abbeyleix

On 18th October, 2014, a Traditional Latin Mass was celebrated in the Church of the Most Holy Rosary, Abbeyleix, Co. Laois. You can find more pictures and information on this magnificant Church in the reports on the Masses in 2013, 2011 and 2010.

 

Annual Latin Mass in Abbeyleix

'Venerable, aged Simeon'

I was surprised to see that the entries for the saints of October 8 begin in The Martyrology of Gorman, with this lovely verse in praise of Saint Simeon:

8. a.

Símeon sruith saeglac[h]
ro gab Ísu ollán,
ar gecaib a gellamh

'Venerable, aged Simeon
who received great ample Jesus
on the branches of his white arms'.

A commentator has added in Latin 'ipse accepit eum in ulnas suas, Luc. ii. 28'. I could not find Saint Simeon commemorated on this day in any of the other Irish calendars, and as he is commemorated in the East on February 3, I wondered where the 12th-century Irish calendarist, Marianus O'Gorman, sourced this October feastday. The translator of the Martyrology of Gorman, Whitley Stokes, does not comment on this particular feast in his discussion of the Biblical saints found on this calendar but notes that 'Gorman, as a rule, agrees with the western martyrologies'. And indeed the Roman Martyrology at October 8 records: 'The same day, the birthday of the blessed Simeon, an aged man, who, as we read in the Gospel, took our Lord Jesus in his arms'.

 I will close with the Song of Simeon in Irish, taken from the translation of the New Testament by Canon Coslett Quinn:

A Thiarna, is anois a cheadaíonn tú do do sheirbhíseach imeacht faoi shíocháin, de réir do bhriathair;
mar tá mo shúile d'eis do shlánú a fheiceáil,
an slánú a réamhullmhaigh tú os comhair na gciníocha uile,
an solas a tharbharfadh eolas ort do na Gintlithe,
agus an solas a bheadh ina ghlóir do do mhuintir Iosrael.

Lúcás II, 29-32.

Note: This post first appeared at my own blog Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae which is dedicated to the saints of Ireland.

Pilgrimage to Enniscorthy Cathedral

The town of Enniscorthy is steeped in Irish history.  The town's foundation can be traced to the monastery of St. Senan and an early base of the Normans who entered Ireland at the nearby Bannow Bay.  Nearby Ferns was the seat of the Kings of Leinster and the see of St. Aiden, patron of the Diocese.  Overlooking the town is Vinegar Hill, where the men of '98 held out until 21st June.

The Cathedral of St. Aiden itself is historic, built in 1843 to the design of A.W. Pugin.