Fat Tuesday: for Catholic Answers

Ash Wednesday last year

My latest for Catholic Answers concerns Shrove Tuesday -- also known as Pancake Day and Fat Tuesday.

In a recent article, I discussed the penitential character of Advent and noted the difficulty of maintaining this while the world seems determined to make the season an anticipatory celebration of Christmas. A similar problem arises in the context of the beginning of Lent—and goes back much farther, historically.

Fat Tuesday Versus Lent

Lent is the Church’s major penitential season. The degree of rigor has varied over the centuries, but in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (CIC), every day of Lent (except Sundays) was a fast day, when we could eat only one full meal and two light meals. (On most of these days, eating meat was permitted.) Earlier in the history of the Church, the Faithful would abstain from not only meat during Lent, but also even eggs and butter.

Read it all there.

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Gnostalgia podcast: the liturgy as sacred magic

I have made an appearance on the Gnostalgia podcast, with Sebastian Morello and Brian Scarffe. We talk about the liturgy and rationalism.

You can get in on your favourite podcast platform, and it is also uploaded (without images!) to YouTube, as shown below.

It was a fun discussion!

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Guild of St Clare Sewing Retreat Spring 2025

This retreat was led by Fr John Saward, Priest in Charge of SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford. The venue was St Joseph's Pastoral Centre in Ashurst, near Southampton.

Marian Franciscan Friars and Sisters to leave Dundee

Bishop McKenzie of Dunkeld (which includes Dundee) has ordered the Marian Franciscan Friars and Sisters, whose communities occupy different parts of the Lawside Convent complex in Dundee, to leave the diocese within six months.

Their finding a place to go will be a challenge. Please pray for them.

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Iota Unum talks for 2025

All in the basement of Our Lady of the Assumption, Warwick Street.

Please enter from the Golden Square side: steps lead down directly to the hall:

24 Golden Square, W1F 9JR near Piccadilly Tube Station (click for a map).

Doors open at 6:30; talk at 7pm. £5 on the door for expenses.

Refreshments provided.

Feb 28, Nina Power: 'Overcoming Modernity's Process of Deracination'

March 21, Joseph Shaw: 'Why liberation enslaves us'

April 25, Niall Gooch

May 30, Daniel Dolley

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Holy Communion: kneeling or standing?

My latest for the Catholic Herald.

Holy Communion at the LMS' High Mass in Bedford

It begins:

The recent letter of Cardinal Blaise Cupich of Chicago on the manner of receiving Holy Communion has reignited the long-standing debate over kneeling and standing.

Contrary to the impression one might receive from the at times acrimonious online debate, Cardinal Cupich’s instructions are par for the course and certainly not outlandish. The problem derives from the complex relationship between the norms agreed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and a deeper layer of liturgical law and magisterial teaching, which I summarised for Una Voce International here.

Like nearly every Bishops’ Conference around the world (that of Kazakhstan is one exception), the US Bishops long ago asked for, and received, permission from the Holy See to permit the Faithful to receive Holy Communion in the hand, instead of on the tongue. At the same time, communion rails were being torn out in churches all over the world, and instead of priests moving up and down a row of communicants kneeling at the rail, they got the Faithful to queue up while they stayed in the same place.

The two practices – kneeling vs. standing, and receiving on the tongue vs. in the hand – have become fused into a single issue: a traditional practice which emphasises reverence, and a post-Vatican II practice that is promoted in the name of an “adult” attitude, and, when conflict arises, in terms of uniformity and obedience to official directives.

Read the whole thing there.

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Fight the Anti-Advent

Some rather nice violet vestments belonging to the Latin Mass Society,
used at the Guild of St Clare Sewing Retreat last Lent.

My latest for Catholic Answers.

It begins:

On the first Sunday of Advent, in place of green, priests celebrating the Mass don vestments of violet, the color of penance, and the Gloria is not said. In this respect, Advent resembles Lent: just as we do penance as we await the liturgical celebration of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, so we do as we await his birth.

Nevertheless, Advent is a carefully calibrated penitential season. Whereas there is no gloria, there is an Alleluia.

Advent has not, historically, usually been regarded as requiring the same degree of penance as Lent. A penitential season leading up to Christmas enters the Church’s historical record in France in the year 480, with fasting three days a week from St. Martin’s Day (November 11), but as it spread to other countries, it became shorter and less severe.

Read the whole thing there.

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