The imagery has been used in a number of recent posts to celebrate feast days and illustrate daily gospel readings.
The move has reportedly sparked some backlash from parishioners over the depiction of sacred figures.
Bishop Fintan Monahan insists it’s an effective tool to help the church that’s informed by strict guidelines.
Last month, the Prime Minister, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, said that he wanted “the earliest possible opportunity to correct this antiquated and archaic anomaly” of historic Victorian-era legislation.
With its Second Reading in the Lords scheduled for 10 November, and subject to parliamentary process, the Bill could pass into law by Christmas.
It seeks to “Repeal provision which prohibits persons of the Roman Catholic or Jewish faiths from advising the Crown on appointments in the Church of England or Church of Scotland; and to repeal provision which precludes such persons from making ecclesiastical appointments.”
Specifically, it would omit sections 17 and 18 of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which bar Mr Burnham from having a right of presentation to benefices, and having the right “to advise the Crown on appointments to offices in Church of England or Church of Scotland”. At the same time, the Jews Relief Act 1858 would be repealed.
“Over the decades, Parliament has rightly repealed or amended many of the other restrictive measures originally contained in both the 1829 and 1858 Acts, and clause 1 simply finishes that long historical journey,” the Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, Mike Wood, said in the Commons on Wednesday of last week.
“By removing these final statutory prohibitions and their draconian penalties, it ensures that the legal bar on a Roman Catholic or Jewish Prime Minister fulfilling their constitutional duties by advising the monarch on church appointments is similarly consigned to history.
“At the same time, the Established Church occupies a distinctive place in our constitutional settlement, and the relationship between Church and State is one that has developed over centuries. In correcting the historical injustice, it is vital that we preserve both our established constitutional arrangement, and the independence and integrity of the Church appointments process.”
He also noted that “the clear and respectful convention for the future, following recent precedent, should be that Prime Ministers who are not members of the Church of England should retain their formal constitutional role in advising the Sovereign, while continuing to delegate any active involvement in the decision-making process to others”.
In the previous debate, the Labour MP for Mid Derbyshire, Jonathan Davies, said: “As an Anglican, there is a little bit of me that would always like to see an Anglican as Prime Minister, but I recognise that that is not always desirable or possible.”
In commending the Bill, the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations and European Relations, Hamish Falconer, said: “Although the Bill is modest, it is an important step forward in ensuring that our laws reflect our belief that a Prime Minister’s faith should not restrict their ability to undertake their role.”
The Bill now continues in Parliament through the Lords.
I am a clergyman in charge of a growing Anglo-Catholic parish church in Winchester. I love my job, I love my parish, I love the Church of England.
When Christ tells us that we are to love our neighbours as ourselves, this does not mean telling our neighbours everything they want to hear or doing everything they would like done.
So it is with the Church Commissioners of the Church of England.
Sometimes hard truths have to be faced, hard words have to be spoken and hard things have to be done. This is the unfortunate case with the Project Spire legal challenge.
The bare facts are these: the Church Commissioners are responsible for administering a fund of roughly £11.6 billion. They are planning to use £100 million of this money on an initiative called Project Spire.
Project Spire essentially constitutes that £100 million being used for slavery reparations.
The Commissioners are not fond of the word “reparations” so they use the words “healing, justice and repair”.
But the fact is that the justification that they are using for Project Spire concerns historical claims that the predecessor fund to the current fund, Queen Anne’s Bounty, was invested in shares in the South Sea Company which dealt in slaves and received money from individuals linked to the slave trade.
The claim is that, since some of the money is derived from slavery, it should be paid to communities affected by historic enslavement. The intention is to invest this money in businesses and social projects in black communities.
I would characterise my objections to Project Spire by saying that I believe it to be legally, historically and morally dubious.
Firstly, on the matter of legality. The Charity Commission states that the Church Commissioners’ charitable activities are as follows:
Promoting the mission and ministry of the Church of England especially by supporting poorer dioceses with ministry costs, providing funds to support mission activities, paying for bishops’ ministry and some cathedral costs, administering the legal framework for pastoral reorganisation and closed church buildings, paying clergy pensions for service prior to 1998 and running the clergy payroll.
Without getting into the legal weeds, the Church Commissioners are purporting to set up a new fund into which the £100 million will be placed because they know that Project Spire does not fit with their charitable purposes. They are using Section 106 of the Charities Act 2011 which they say justifies this move legally.
But Section 106 exists to give a charity legal authorisation to move funds if there is a moral obligation to do so. For example, if a will fails to reflect a deceased person’s intentions and money was paid to a charity as a result then Section 106 may apply. We believe that the proposed payment fails the applicable legal test in this instance because there is no moral obligation for the funds to be used in this way.
In addition, from a layman’s perspective on matters of law, the Church Commissioners are seeking special authorisation because the proposed transfer falls outside their ordinary spending powers. They are aware that this is the case.
Why do they not simply focus on what they are supposed to be using this money for?
Surely the Church of England’s use of charitable funds should be above reproach rather than of questionable legality.
Secondly, the historical argument lacks credibility. Again, I speak as a layman, but the historical justification for Project Spire makes the basic mistake of conflates the South Sea Company with South Sea Annuities, claiming that Queen Anne’s Bounty derived profit from shares in the former which was heavily linked to the slave trade.
But the fact is that Queen Anne’s Bounty was primarily invested in South Sea Annuities, which were in effect government bonds — the profits of which did not derive from the slave trade.
The Bounty acquired South Sea Company stock in 1720 and disposed of its trading shares by 1730. Those shares were sold, crucially, at a financial loss. The income from South Sea Annuities was interest on government debt and not profit from slave trading.
The Commissioners’ report also makes the claim that the fund derived partly from benefactions from people linked to slavery. But these claims are questionable also because a donor’s association with slavery does not by itself show that a particular donation came from slave-trading profits.
There are various other things that could be said about the historical argument, such as the fact that the British Empire played a leading role in the abolition of slavery and that it was in fact prominent members of the Church of England, such as William Wilberforce, who were critically influential.
And we should also note the ubiquity of slavery in pre-abolition times between people of all skin colours such that it is simply absurd to identify black people in modern western nations as uniquely disadvantaged by slavery.
The whole notion of reparations in general is incoherent in any case because, in order to be consistent, it would imply that we should go through the entire moral register of history attempting to repay everyone for every historic injustice that their ancestors faced and that may have resulted in their present-day disadvantages.
How comprehensive should we be? Should descendants of nineteenth century cotton mill workers in northern England be repaid for the less than salubrious working conditions suffered by their forebears, for example?
Should descendants of Anglo-Saxon villagers receive reparations from the scions of marauding Vikings? The whole concept descends into ludicrous farce when any kind of consistency is applied.
I am already straying into the territory of ethics. And it is here where I can speak perhaps with some existential authority. I live and breathe the atmosphere of a parish church that does not receive adequate funding to carry out fundamental parochial ministry. I am myself not paid by the Church of England for my role but only receive a house for the better performance of my duties.
Mine is one of thousands of churches the length and breadth of the country that does not receive even the baseline level of stipendiary ministry needed to facilitate thriving parishes.
Instead, what we see are ever increasingly large mergers of parishes to make benefices of multiple churches, often numbering in double figures, with a single stipendiary vicar to oversee them all, leading to decline, depression and burnout. We see churches shut and turned into flats.
We see historic vicarages sold for a quick injection of cash into diocesan bank accounts. We feel very little, if any, benefit from the Church Commissioners’ £11.6 billion fund.
That fund ought to preclude all of this by giving parishes a chance to flourish. Instead, clergy and hard-working laity labour seemingly against the system in order to keep their beloved parish churches alive.
When I was given the chance to challenge Project Spire in the courts, I hesitated. I did not want to bring obloquy upon myself or upon my parish church.
But I believe that the Church Commissioners ought to think again. They should abandon Project Spire and use this money for the purposes for which it was given in the first place: to assist parish churches in their vital ministry to the people of this nation.
Police said Stephen and Janet Timmis, aged 68 and 61, of Psalter Lane, Sheffield, had each been charged with eight counts of rape against the same woman following a report of non-recent sexual abuse.
The charges relate to offences alleged to have taken place between May and September 2008 while Timmis was a leader at The Crowded House church in the city.
The pair have been released on bail to appear at Sheffield Magistrates' Court on 1 December, police said.
South Yorkshire Police said their inquiries suggested former church members may have information that could assist the investigation and urged them to come forward.
"Anyone with information will be offered appropriate support as required," they added.
In a video posted on X, Burke is seen repeatedly grabbing Archbishop McDowell's arm and calling him a "traitor" throughout the five-minute clip.
The sacked schoolteacher can be seen strutting towards the clergyman, calling his name before latching onto him.
Archbishop McDowell is seen trying to walk away but Burke follows him - accosting him along the way.
The Church of Ireland reported the incident to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and an investigation has begun.
A spokesperson for the Church of Ireland confirmed that the PSNI was contacted following the incident that took place in the grounds of St Patrick’s Cathedral Armagh involving the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, the Most Rev’d John McDowell.
Enoch Burke approached the Archbishop following the funeral service for a rector of the Diocese who died suddenly last week, and proceeded to accost and obstruct the Archbishop as he left the cathedral grounds and returned to the See House.
"Enoch Burke has been jailed on a number of occasions in The Republic of Ireland for contempt of court and not for any religious beliefs that he may hold," the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson for the Church of Ireland added: “Yesterday, Archbishop McDowell and the family, colleagues and friends of a late rector gathered at St Patrick’s Cathedral Armagh for the funeral service of a dear and much respected pastor.
The spokesperson added that it was "a matter of deep concern and sadness" that it had been considered this was an appropriate occasion to confront the Archbishop in "a particularly hostile and aggressive manner."
"No respect was shown for the occasion or the sanctity of the cathedral grounds. Entry onto the See House property, which is a private residence, is a further concern. Archbishop McDowell, other members of the Church who were present, and the Church’s authorities, will assist with the PSNI’s enquiries."The Church of Ireland will not be making any further statement until the police investigation is complete."
A video posted on social media by former teacher Burke shows him confronting and grabbing the arm of Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland John McDowell.
A spokesperson for the church said Burke and members of his family approached the archbishop following a funeral service at St Patrick's Church of Ireland Cathedral on Thursday.
Burke has been in a long-running legal battle for defying court orders to stay away from a school that dismissed him for gross misconduct.
The dismissal arose out of his refusal to obey a direction of the school that a transgender pupil be addressed as 'they' and "because of his gross misconduct at a school religious service (and other events) and the manner in which he conducted his objection to transgenderism", according to the legal judgement.
The school also obtained an injunction restraining Mr Burke from trespassing on the school premises, which he has defied a number of times.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) confirmed it was investigating a report of an assault on a member of the clergy.
"Police enquiries are ongoing," a spokesperson added.
In the video, Burke, along with another man, confronts McDowell and grabs his arm before the Archbishop says "you are assaulting me".
He accuses McDowell of staying "silent" after Burke said he was in a "prison cell for 700 days".
McDowell continues to tell Burke that he is "assaulting" him and "preventing me from going about my lawful business".
He then says: "If you keep assaulting me, I am going to report you to the police."
Another member of the church tells Burke "you are in the grounds of a cathedral at a funeral".
A Church of Ireland spokesperson said it was a matter of "deep concern and sadness" that the Burke family had confronted the archbishop in a "particularly hostile and aggressive manner" following the funeral service for a rector of the diocese who died last week.
"No respect was shown for the occasion or the sanctity of the cathedral grounds," they continued.
"Entry onto the See House property, which is a private residence, is a further concern."
The Church said it would assist police with their enquiries and would make no further comment until the investigation was complete.
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Father Richard Storey, who was accused in May of stealing $160,000 from Curé of Ars Catholic Church in Leawood near Kansas City, Kansas, pleaded guilty to the theft on Oct. 27.
The Kansas City Archdiocese said in a statement that Storey had already repaid just under $160,000 to the parish as restitution. The priest will be sentenced in January.
The archdiocese said it would initiate a canonical investigation following the guilty plea. In addition to the theft, the diocese said it would investigate an “allegation involving an adult victim.”
The archdiocesan finance council’s audit committee will review the results of the investigation, the statement said, after which the committee would present its own analysis to the archdiocesan promoter of justice, who will suggest potential canonical actions to Archbishop Shawn McKnight.
The archbishop “will share the findings of the investigation with the Curé of Ars Parish and communicate its conclusion to the faithful,” the archdiocese said.
Storey allegedly utilized the stolen funds in part on cruises, including at least one apparent withdrawal from within a casino.
Tens of thousands of dollars, meanwhile, were reportedly spent on international travel. The archdiocesan statement said that Storey’s guilty plea fell under “severity level 7,” or a “non-person, non-drug felony.”
The Kansas City Star reported that the plea agreement recommended the priest receive probation including “substance abuse evaluation.”
It says it is frustrated by delays in fulfilling a pledge made by most parties in the wide ruling coalition to reform the fund.
However, another coalition partner, the centre-right Polish People’s Party (PSL), says that it will oppose the bill, calling instead for a system allowing taxpayers to allocate part of their taxes to religious institutions of their choice. Senior church figures also say they have not been consulted.
The Church Fund, originally established in 1950 to compensate religious communities for property seized by the communist authorities, provides state subsidies for the health insurance contributions of clergy, for religious organisations’ charitable activities, and for the renovation of religious buildings.
It now supports all legally recognised religious denominations in Poland, including those that did not lose property at the time. Last year, the state spent 275.7 million zloty on the Church Fund. This year it has budgeted 272.6 million zloty.
Most of this money is then used to cover 80% of clergy members’ social security contributions. Under the bill proposed by The Left, churches would pay half of the contributions, with clergy covering the other half.
For regular workers, such contributions are funded jointly by employees and their employers, Anna Maria Żukowska, the head of The Left’s parliamentary caucus, pointed out, as quoted by the Polish Press Agency (PAP). “We are introducing the same arrangement for priests and members of the clergy.”
An exception is made in the bill for members of enclosed religious orders and missionaries, who would have their contributions paid in full by their churches. The cost of maintaining historic churches would be covered by the National Fund for the Protection of Monuments, Żukowska explained.
Włodzimierz Czarzasty, who is the leader of The Left as well as the speaker of the Sejm, the more powerful chamber in the Polish parliament, said the party did not oppose religion but wanted clergy to be treated equally under the law.
“I would like to remind my coalition partners: our coalition agreement includes a commitment to work toward establishing the principles of a secular state in Poland,” he said, speaking alongside Żukowska. “Our patience is running out”.
Ahead of the 2023 election, both the centrist Civic Coalition (KO) led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and The Left pledged to abolish the Church Fund, while the centre-right Poland 2050 (Polska 2050) proposed replacing state funding with voluntary taxpayer contributions. PSL had no equivalent formal party-wide pledge.
In 2024, after the coalition came to power, Tusk announced plans to reform the fund and appointed a government working group led by the PSL leader and deputy prime minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz. The group’s work has since stalled.
Kosiniak-Kamysz yesterday dismissed The Left’s proposal, saying it has “not the slightest chance of support in parliament”. His party, the second largest in the coalition with 32 of 239 MPs, sees the existing fund as an inexpensive form of compensation and will oppose abolishing it, he vowed.
Instead, taxpayers should be able to allocate part of their taxes to a religious institution of their choice, a system used in several European countries, to “let the Polish people themselves decide whether or not they want to contribute,” he said, quoted by broadcaster Polsat News.
Interior minister Marcin Kierwiński, a member of Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO), said that he supported reform, but criticised The Left for submitting the bill without consulting its coalition partners.
Religious communities also criticised the proposal for not having been discussed with them in advance.
In a press statement sent to PAP, the Polish Episcopal Conference (KEP), the main organ of the Catholic church in Poland, said any solution should comply with the country’s agreement with the Vatican, as well as the constitutional principle that relations between the state and religious communities be regulated by mutual agreement.
Bishop Jerzy Samiec, head of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland, the country’s biggest Protestant body, pointed to the significant costs churches face in maintaining their properties, including care homes and other facilities.
The Catholic Church, Poland’s dominant religious institution, has seen a long-term decline in public trust, with only 35% of Poles saying they trusted it in 2025. That has coincided with a series of crises in recent years, in particular over revelations of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy and negligence in dealing with them by the church hierarchy.
A variety of surveys, including from the church itself, show that religious attendance and identification have been declining in Poland in recent years.
She recently took on additional responsibilities when a vacancy for a lead priest opened up.
She was described as “the loveliest and most empathetic person I’ve met” by one parishioner who told The Times that she was a popular figure in the parish.
Her popularity compounded the shock that was felt when the Archdeacon of Wandsworth read out her letter of resignation at a service last Sunday.
Hunt had previously worked for several charities before training for ordination and in the letter, said she had “loved this community and … had some wonderful and joyful experiences”.
She said she had stood alongside local people “in times of laughter, joy and celebration, and in times of deep and profound sorrow”.
She added: “It should not go unnoticed that I am the first African-Caribbean heritage priest in the almost 700-year history of this worshipping site.”
On September 24, Hunt described attending an event in the parish called a “seminar supper”, which is described as a monthly meal for about 14 people at a local home, which involves “a home-cooked meal, and space for learning, conversation, and Q&A in a relaxed, welcoming setting” on the church’s website.
In her letter, Hunt said: “What was meant to be a pleasant evening amongst friends turned into a personal attack on me and my personhood. I was on the receiving end of racist abuse.”
According to a 2024 report on racism in the church, priests can face “enormous prejudice”, especially if you are not “white-skinned”.
The report says that priests from minority ethnic backgrounds face “a lot of barriers” in finding permanent roles after their curacies.
Hunt did not specify who had abused her, or detail what had been said, but added: “In speaking those words, it was not just about me but all those who look like me, my family, friends and those who share my culture and heritage.”
“Whilst the racial abuse was happening, other members of this community present witnessed what was taking place and sat in silence. The silence was palpable,” she went on.
“Silence of this nature is equally as harmful as the racial words that are spoken. And what this demonstrated to me in that moment was that I was neither seen nor valued as a member of this community. No one proffered to advocate on my behalf. Inaction and politely looking the other way can never be a response to racism; it is, instead, an act of complicity.”
Hunt added: “What happened that evening is not OK.. And whilst I am sure that it is not a view shared by the whole community, and whilst I have been grateful to receive messages of love and support, the entire episode has damaged the trust and has been deeply distressing.
“Therefore, I have taken the decision to lay down my curacy and step away.”
One parishioner said that no one had been told the details of “what led up to the outburst” at the meal, or who was responsible, and added that there had been no prior tension between the priest and the attendees, adding: “The whole parish is very upset.”
The Archdeacon of Wandsworth, the Venerable Bridget Shepherd, who was reportedly in attendance at the meal, said in a statement: “I’m aware that this situation has had a significant impact on Sharon, and on others who’ve been affected by it. What took place at the Seminar Supper was unacceptable. No one should have to tolerate racism -however it manifests itself.”
She said Hunt’s resignation would “produce a range of emotions - sadness, confusion, guilt, anger and defensiveness” and urged the congregation to “to take time to prayerfully reflect on what has happened”.
Pastoral support is reportedly being provided to Hunt by the Diocese of Southwark, which says it is investigating the incident.
A spokesperson for the Diocese said: “We condemn racism unequivocally. It is abhorrent, unacceptable and has no place in the Church. We are deeply saddened by this situation.”
A thousand years of monastic life. A blessing for which to give many thanks to God.
The abbey of Montserrat, and the spectacular mountain on which it stands (with its serrated shape, which gives it its name), is a reference point for the Catholic Church in Catalonia. Not in vain, the Virgin of Montserrat, together with Saint George, is the patroness of Catalonia.
One of its “milestones,” already in the twentieth century, has been to become a symbol of Catalan culture and a bastion of its language, while at the same time—and this interests us more here—it moved in liturgical vanguardism.
It is very interesting that, long before the Second Vatican Council, Montserrat joined the new winds of the liturgical movement: from July 5 to 10, 1915, the First Liturgical Congress took place in Montserrat.
A brief reflection on the liturgical movement, its origins and development, is important in order to properly frame what it implied in Montserrat.
Professor Roberto de Mattei considers that Pope Saint Pius X had outlined the lines of a program of authentic liturgical renewal, inspired by the furrow opened by Fr. Guéranguer (1805–1875), abbot of Solesmes, restorer of monastic life in France after the French Revolution, who had understood the renewal of monastic life as a return to traditional Roman liturgy.
Joseph Ratzinger and Peter Kwasniewski, among others, have highlighted how, at the beginnings of the liturgical movement, its promoters desired above all the intelligent and active participation of the faithful in the traditional liturgy of the Church—not in any other type of liturgy.
However, some of the theologians, priests, and monks involved in the movement already had from the beginning innovative or problematic ideas. In this context, one must understand the celebration of the First Liturgical Congress of 1915 held in Montserrat, which was lived, above all, from a text of Pope Pius X, “Tra le sollecitudini” (1903), dedicated to sacred music.
There, around the nuncio Francesco Ragonesi, all the bishops of the dioceses in Catalonia and more than 2,000 congress participants gathered to attend conferences and homilies in which they debated how to improve the liturgy of the Mass. They sought to foster the active participation of the people and liturgical renewal.
Wheat and tares, because, among its results, are the renewal of sacred art, the publication of euchological texts in vernacular languages, and the establishment of the doctrinal foundations that would later crystallize in the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium of the Second Vatican Council.
Because the tares were also among the promoters of the Liturgical Movement from the beginning, as we have indicated, among some of the theologians, priests, and monks who already had innovative or problematic ideas: for some, the new liturgical movement had a substantially anti-Roman inspiration and moved independently of the indications of the Holy See and even openly against them.
Professor Roberto de Mattei explains how postmodernist liturgism had its main interpreter in Fr. Lambert Beauduin (1873–1960), a Belgian Benedictine of Mont-César, whose intervention at the Congrès National des Oeuvres Catholiques de Malines on September 23, 1909, is considered the beginning of the new movement: “The congress was an opportunity to bring together good wills, establish a program of action, concretize a plan of campaign, in short, create a liturgical movement” (in the words of Fr. Beauduin himself). During his novitiate, Beauduin had understood his idea of “liturgical renewal” in the phrase “il faudrait démocratiser la liturgie”.
To carry it out, he developed the notion of “active participation of the faithful”, a phrase that Pius X would include at the end of the third paragraph of his Motu Proprio Tra le sollecitudini. When, in 1913, Maurice Festugière, a Benedictine of Maredsous, published his study La liturgie catholique, in which he thoroughly attacked Ignatian spirituality, Fr. Beauduin defined the work as “the inauguration of the scientific basis of the liturgical movement,” of which he was a passionate defender.
“A profound struggle of ideas was prepared in the realm of piety and asceticism,” wrote Fr. Beauduin. A year later, Beauduin himself published the pamphlet La piété de l´Église: principes et faits, considered by many as the programmatic text of the nascent liturgical movement. Among Fr. Beauduin’s admirers in Italy was the Oratorian of Brescia Giulio Bevilacqua, to whom the young Giovanni Battista Montini owed his liturgical formation.
In Germany, the celebration of the “community Mass” that took place on August 6, 1921, in the crypt of the German abbey of Maria Laach, is considered the starting point of the “liturgical movement.”
The liturgical movement of Maria Laach is linked to figures such as its monk Odo Casel and Romano Guardini, who, in the early years of his activity, was in decisive contact with the abbey. At the impulse of both, in 1918 the three collections of publications of the liturgical movement were born. Fr. Pius Parsch, an Augustinian canon of the abbey of Klosterneuburg, near Vienna, began to celebrate at the beginning of the 1920s a Mass facing the people and to translate the liturgical texts into German.
His main work was taken up by the Jesuit Joseph Jungmann, expressing the idea of a “popular liturgy” that horizontalized the vertical relationship with God. The participants in the first “liturgical Masses” of Klosterneuburg came from the biblical movement which, in Germany, as in Belgium, converged with the liturgical one. Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli did not hide his criticisms of the new liturgism; also in the 1930s, the activities at the abbey of Maria Laach would be the object of severe criticisms by Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli.
The reformers tended to eliminate the substantial difference between the sacramental priesthood of presbyters and the common priesthood of the laity, so that they attributed to the community of the faithful a true and proper priestly nature; they insinuated the idea of a “concelebration” of the priest with the people; they maintained that one should “participate” actively in the Mass by dialoguing with the priest, to the exclusion of any other legitimate form of assistance to the Sacrifice, such as meditation, the Rosary, or other private prayers; they advocated reducing the altar to a table; they considered communion outside Mass, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, perpetual adoration, as extra-liturgical forms of piety; they showed little regard for devotions to the Sacred Heart and to the Virgin, to the saints, and, in general, for traditional spirituality and morality.
It was, in a word, a “reinterpretation” of the doctrine and structure of the Church in order to adapt them to the modern spirit.
Professor Kwasniewski considers that “some of the best theologians saw the destruction coming and lamented that day.”
The professor considers that, in its terminal phase, similar to that of a cancer, the liturgical movement had become a second-rate modernist theology, embedded in a prosaic and earthly spirituality and devoid of imagination, together with a tremendous naivety in matters of sociology and worship, in addition to a good dose of pure dishonesty in its unbalanced ressourcement, its partisan erudition, its narrow agendas, and a peculiarly modern form of archaism that did not seek to restore the mentality and spirituality that corresponded to the external elements supposedly recovered from primitive Christianity.
In Montserrat many events occurred in the years from 1915 and the celebration of the First Liturgical Congress until the beginning of the Second Vatican Council. The Second Republic, anticlerical, was established in Spain in 1931.
The monks continued in the monastery, and in 1932, one of them, Dom Adalbert Franquesa, was ordained a priest and in 1933 was sent to the monastery of Beuron to further his formation. Subsequently, he was sent to the German abbey of Maria Laach to complete his liturgical formation.
At that time, in the monastery church there was no lower choir for the monks, but only the upper choir, where the community prayed the Divine Office. A first change consisted in the placement, in 1934, of a lower monastic choir, around the altar, with 75 seats.
By the dates and places, we can also deduce that Dom Adalbert Franquesa then came into contact with the heterodox and disruptive drift of the liturgical movement. Years later, he established a deep friendship with Annibale Bugnini, whose letters, preserved in the Library of the Abbey of Montserrat, have been studied by Yves Chiron in the latter’s biography (recently published by the publishing house Homo Legens in Spanish).
In 1936 the Spanish Civil War broke out, and the Benedictine community was forced to abandon the monastery until 1939. Upon their return, Fr. Bernabé Dalmau, author of a brief work entitled “The Liturgical Reform in Montserrat,” considers that the resumption of monastic life in Montserrat made possible “a rebirth of the liturgical impulse that had been preparing since the First Congress of 1915”. Along the way, the community had lost no less than 23 monks during the Civil War, who attained the palm of martyrdom at the hands of the red terror.
On the political level, as the portal Germinans Germinabit highlighted in the article “A myth of Catalanism,” there was a cordial relationship with the Generalissimo that the official narrative tries to hide. It is totally understandable, although it weighs on today’s progressives, that the monks looked with concern at how events were developing during the Second Republic and that, therefore, they received with hope the military uprising of July 18, 1936, and that the religious who survived, like so many others, saw in Franco a savior of the Church from the extermination that the republic proposed, since he also returned the monastery to them.
On the liturgical level, already from the recovery of the monastery once the war was over, the new lower choir built in 1934 was always occupied for the celebration of Vespers and the conventual Mass.
In the global European context, in 1947 the encyclical Mediator Dei of Pius XII on the Sacred Liturgy had appeared, which sought to correct the deviations of the liturgical movement.
However, the Pope, influenced by his confessor, the Jesuit Agostino Bea, admitted that the biblical movement should carry forward a work of liturgical reform, already begun before Mediator Dei with the new Latin version of the psalms made from the Hebrew and begun at the Biblical Institute in 1941.
In 1948 a secret Commission for liturgical reform was appointed by the pope, with the young priest Annibale Bugnini as its secretary. In 12 years (1948–1960), the commission worked in absolute secrecy. Practically all the liturgical books were renewed, in particular the Divine Office and Holy Week.
Toward the end of the Second World War, the Center of Liturgical Pastoral of Paris, directed by Canon Aimé-Georges Martimort, and the Liturgical Institute of Trier, directed by Msgr. Johannes Wagner, made contact with the abbey of Mont-César.
In 1951 the two centers organized, at the abbey of Maria Laach, a private meeting, in which, without the presence of any representative of the Roman hierarchy, the problem of a radical reform of the Mass was treated for the first time. Jungmann, leader of the German liturgical movement, proposed structural changes to the very canon of consecration.
All the above shows that when the Second Vatican Council arrived, much experimentation with the liturgy had already taken place and ideas of radical reform had been introduced that would materialize from 1964, once the Liturgical Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium was promulgated.
In fact, the reason for its rapid approval by the conciliar Fathers, in comparison with other proposed texts, was that it already contained, in germ, many of the more radical changes that were intended to be introduced later. And that explains the experimentations and abuses of all kinds carried out during the Second Vatican Council itself.
Montserrat, meanwhile, continued to introduce innovations, in contact with the central-European protagonists of the liturgical movement and the advances of the Council: Fr. Dalmau affirms that, “the pastoral sense that the altar facing the people favored the participation of the faithful” was already quite current in Montserrat before the civil war, as can be seen in the private chapels of families in which the monastery had some influence in towns of the Catalan geography.
Recovered the abbey in 1939, all the altars were made facing the people, and in the 1950s the remodeling of the presbytery was already projected. The current high altar was consecrated on April 23, 1959. The remodeling allowed increasing the number of choir seats (from 75 to 100).
At the same time, work was being done in the monastic communities on the union of the lay brothers, who until then were not of choir, with the monks properly of choir (those who prayed the Divine Office).
In Montserrat, once the altar was built, the lay monks habitually participated in the liturgy, even occupying the first bench of the faithful in that era of a numerous community. It was also the moment to replace the two symmetrical ambos to distinguish the one for the Gospel from the one for the Epistle.
The first was built raised and taking advantage of the sculpture representing the eagle, symbol of the evangelist John, and placing it next to a fixed candlestick for the Paschal candle. At the opposite end was placed obliquely the ambo for the Epistle.
The construction of the high altar caused controversy, but from Montserrat they justified it arguing that no liturgical book prohibited the altar facing the people, that the ceremonial of bishops provides for incensing by surrounding the altar (therefore, it contemplates that it may be separated from the wall) and resorting to the example of the Roman basilicas that have it so.
This example, however, involves a fallacy, because the placement of the altar was due to the orientation of these buildings, in which the priest had to be situated looking “toward the people” because in reality he was celebrating toward the east.
But postconciliar archaeologism has built here a legend that already in antiquity Mass was celebrated facing the people and the Council did nothing more than recover that ancient tradition. The reality is quite different: the introducer of the Mass facing the people was Luther.
By the 1960s, the relationship between Montserrat and Franco changed radically. Abbot Escarré, then, went from being a supporter of the Franco regime to becoming one of its most vehement critics. He decided to embrace Catalanism and the critical position of some ecclesiastical sectors and went so far as to affirm in the French newspaper Le Monde in 1963 that “the Spanish regime calls itself Christian, but does not obey the basic principles of Christianity.”
From then on, not only distancing but confrontation occurred between the abbot and the head of state. Escarré (who went into exile and died in 1968) and his successor, Cassià Maria Just, hosted in the monastery all kinds of meetings to promote political Catalanism and erode the Franco regime.
In his reply to the memoirs of Cardinal Tarancón, Blas Piñar explains very clearly how this anti-Franco turn occurred, which was not only of Montserrat but of the entire hierarchy of the Church in Spain, by direct instruction of Paul VI, and how the Spanish episcopate approached the ideological and political left.
Of this, we will have occasion to treat another day, God willing. It is important today, however, that we retain this dynamic, known to all, of the Church in Spain, in order to understand these changes that occurred in the abbey of Montserrat.
Changes in monastic life in the monastery were also proposed in the same decade, which culminated with the forced transfer of the dissidents of the abbey to the Priory of Cuixà, which made manifest the division that was lived in Montserrat, coinciding with the exile of Abbot Escarré.
Eight monks were transferred to Cuixà in 1965, which became a meeting place for opponents of the regime and for those who defended a more radical application of the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council.
During the Council, Fr. Adalbert Franquesa, whose international liturgical formation since the 1930s we have already spoken of, was part of the international team that worked on the renewal of the liturgy, in the preparation of the Constitution “Sacrosanctum Concilium.”
And he was chosen as representative of the Spanish episcopate to advise the bishops on the liturgy. Dom Franquesa decidedly bet on concelebration, explains Yves Chiron in the biography of Annibale Bugnini.
At the monastery of Mont-César, in Louvain, Fr. Franquesa and the theologian Karl Rahner gave respective conferences on concelebration.
Once the Second Vatican Council was concluded, Fr. Franquesa occupied a prominent place in the Consilium, formed in 1964, presided over by Cardinal Lercaro and whose secretary was Bugnini himself.
Fr. Franquesa was elected a member of the Catalan Society of Liturgical Studies, a branch of the Institut d´Estudis Catalans, and years later was the first superior of the small Montserrat community that settled in the Ecumenical Institute of Tantur, in the Holy Land. Because Paul VI thought of the monks of Montserrat so that in said Institute there would be a monastic presence.
The pope himself received in audience the monks who would go to Tantur, accompanied by Abbot Cassià Maria Just and Abbot Gabriel Brasó.
Yves Chiron has studied the unpublished letters addressed by Bugnini to Dom Franquesa that are preserved in the library of the abbey and that, in his opinion, provide interesting data on the conciliar years and those following regarding liturgical reform.
Among them, Chiron highlights how the Consilium, in which Dom Franquesa was present, elaborated two new rites for concelebration and communion under both species. Study group XVI was in charge of this work. The relator was Dom Vagaggini and the secretary, another Benedictine, Franquesa.
Several successive drafts were elaborated and, following a practice—Chiron affirms—that would be repeated with other texts, the Consilium authorized at the same time “experiments” increasingly numerous before the definitive rite was adopted. From different sources one can reconstruct the chronology of this elaboration, which lasted from November 1963 to March 1965.
On June 26, 1964 the pope authorized celebrations of the new rite of concelebration in six Benedictine abbeys: San Anselmo in Rome, Montserrat, En-Calcat, Maredsous, Maria Laach and Collegeville, as well as in the Dominican convent of Saulchoir, in Paris.
The Benedictine abbeys that had been chosen to “experiment” with concelebration were chosen because they had one of their monks among the consultants or experts of the Consilium. They were the ones who presided over or organized the experimental concelebrations in their abbey. Thus, Dom Adalbert Franquesa, who had been secretary of the group that elaborated the schema on concelebration, directed those of the abbey of Montserrat.
In July 1964, Fr. Bugnini wrote to him: “How are the experimenta going?”, and added: “I would be glad if Montserrat prepared a nice album for the Holy See” . In fact, the abbeys and the Dominican convent where these experimental concelebrations were held—each of them carried out several—had to send a report to the Consilium and, if possible, take photographs of the ceremonies. These would be shown to the pope.
The Italian writer Cristina Campo had sent the pope a petition in February 1966, together with 37 other signatures from various parts of the world, which asked Paul VI that the Latin-Gregorian liturgy, as it had been celebrated for fifteen centuries in monastic communities, remain intact and complete, at least in those conventual churches that did not have strictly parochial functions; and that in this liturgy, including the Mass, there be no parts in the vernacular language nor music other than Gregorian chant; that in conventual churches amplifiers or other mechanical instruments that would irremediably distort the nature of plainchant and the character of the place not be used.
“This would allow – said the letter – a large part of the faithful, and non-Catholics who so desire, to continue participating in or attending the traditional liturgy and chant, without diminishing the importance of other liturgical forms recently adopted in parish churches throughout the world”.
But the monks of Montserrat, like many other monastic communities, were very far from the sentiment of Cristina Campo and the other laity who battled for the maintenance of the traditional Latin Mass. The bet on the Catalan vernacular language was very decided, as a symbol of the Catalan nationalism that the monastery represented.
The bet on Catalan in the liturgy was one of the three fundamental decisions adopted by the Montserrat community after the Council, together with its own musical repertoire and, more recently, the broadcasting of the principal offices via the internet, according to Fr. Bernabé Dalmau.
There is a very significant difference both in the disposition of the monks’ choir and the presbytery and in the “style” of monastic liturgy between the monasteries of Montserrat, Benedictine, and Poblet, Cistercian. Both, governed by the Rule of Saint Benedict. Perhaps it may be interesting to treat the liturgy at Santa María de Poblet on another occasion.
The prelate has also alerted to a secularization that no longer affects only laws and institutions, but has penetrated the very conscience of individuals.
These reflections are part of the second videopodcast published by the Spanish Episcopal Conference, on Thursday, October 29, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of its creation. Blázquez reviews his two terms as president of the Spanish episcopate, between 2005 and 2008 and between 2014 and 2020, as well as the main religious, social, and political challenges that marked those years.
The interview continues the first installment of the series, featuring Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela, who also reflected on the loss of faith, the defense of life and the family, and the Church’s mission in Spanish society.
Blázquez admits that the Church was late in addressing abuse
One of the most significant moments of the conversation comes when the cardinal recalls the meeting convened by Francis in February 2019 with the presidents of the episcopal conferences from around the world to address sexual abuse committed within the Church.
Blázquez acknowledges that the meeting made it possible to recognize the seriousness of the problem and the inadequacy of the responses offered over the years.
“Probably we had all arrived late to this issue,” he states, extending that reflection also to families and other areas of society.
The prelate also recalls the words spoken by Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI, during the Way of the Cross on Good Friday 2005, when he denounced the “filth” present in the Church.
According to him, that intervention constituted a wake-up call about a reality whose gravity was progressively understood.
Blázquez insists that abuse is not limited to the sexual sphere, but can also manifest itself through the improper exercise of authority, power, and conscience.
“Sometimes some abuses lead to others,” he warns, explaining how a position of authority can be used to take advantage of people who are in a situation of vulnerability.
The former president of the CEE recalls the meetings he held with victims and relatives of people who had suffered abuse. Listening to their testimonies, he explains, allowed him to understand the suffering caused and the gravity of the facts.
Although he believes that the Spanish Church has taken important steps to address this reality, he insists on the need to maintain that commitment.
Asked about the possibility of reversing the measures adopted, he responds categorically: “There is no going back.”
Secularization has reached the conscience of individuals
Another central issue of the interview is the loss of the presence of the Catholic faith in Spanish society.
Blázquez maintains that the Church has had to face a profound cultural transformation, in which it can no longer take for granted the Catholic character of society.
“The Church could no longer count on society being Catholic,” he notes when explaining the changes experienced during his years of episcopal responsibility.
The cardinal warns that secularization does not affect only laws or institutions, but also personal convictions.
It is, in his words, a process that reaches “the very conscience” and “the very interiority of the person.”
In this situation, he considers it necessary to maintain the missionary character of the Church and to proclaim the Gospel in a society where many citizens have distanced themselves from the faith.
Blázquez recalls that Pope Francis’s insistence on a “Church going forth” reinforced a concern already present in the Spanish episcopate: the need to bring the Christian message to a society increasingly removed from its religious roots.
Marriage and the family suffer a “deinstitutionalization”
The defense of marriage and the family occupies a prominent place in the cardinal’s reflections, who identifies their weakening as one of the major problems of Spanish society.
Blázquez recalls that, during his second term at the head of the CEE, these issues were among the bishops’ main concerns, along with the response to the abuse of minors.
The prelate warns that the institution of marriage has undergone a process of deterioration affecting various European countries and that has also spread to Spain.
“Since the family is a foundation of every person and of society as a whole, if the family is not well oriented and well grounded, we all run many risks,” he maintains.
The cardinal recalls that in some European countries there was already talk of a “deinstitutionalization” of marriage, a situation he considers present in Spain as well.
“It matters a great deal to all of us that marriage and the family enjoy good health,” he insists.
His words place the family crisis beyond the private sphere, recalling that marital and family stability constitutes a foundation of social life and the transmission of values between generations.
Two wishes for the future: more priests and strengthened families
Reflecting on the future of the Church in Spain, Blázquez expresses two wishes he considers especially important.
The first is an increase in vocations to the priesthood, a decisive issue to guarantee pastoral care and the continuity of sacramental life in the dioceses.
The second is the strengthening of the family, whose situation particularly concerns him in light of the cultural and social changes of recent decades.
Both issues are closely linked to the challenges the cardinal identifies throughout the interview: the transmission of the faith, secularization, and the need to sustain Christian communities.
The years of ETA and the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco
Blázquez also devotes a significant part of the conversation to his time as bishop of Bilbao, marked by the terrorist activity of ETA.
The cardinal recalls that he accepted his appointment out of obedience to the Pope, despite the difficulties involved in taking on that diocese in a context of strong political and social tension.
He explains that, upon arriving in the Basque Country, he sought to listen to and understand a situation in which he considered it necessary to distinguish three realities: nationalism, separatism, and terrorism.
One of the episodes that most deeply marked his ministry was the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco in July 1997, whose funeral he presided over in Ermua.
“Those days were terrible,” he recalls, referring to the kidnapping of the Popular Party councilor, ETA’s ultimatum, and the citizen mobilizations that demanded his release.
The cardinal highlights the reaction of a society that took to the streets en masse to condemn terrorism and recalls the everyday fear that many people experienced during those years.
He also expresses his satisfaction at ETA’s abandonment of violence and states that the Church condemned terrorist acts.
Relations with governments and religious education
Recalling his first presidency of the CEE, which began in 2005, Blázquez refers to the tensions with the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, especially regarding educational reforms and the place of religious education in schools.
The cardinal explains that those years were marked by a profound cultural change, as well as by legislative controversies.
However, he defends the importance of institutional dialogue, even when there are fundamental disagreements.
“It is very important never to stop engaging in honest dialogue,” he maintains.
As an example of the agreements reached, he recalls the modification of the percentage of tax allocation destined for the Catholic Church, which went from 0.52% to 0.7%.
Blázquez explains that this allocation does not constitute an additional tax, but rather an option for taxpayers to decide the destination of part of their taxes.
A call to recover concord in Spain
The interview also addresses the institutional and political crisis Spain experienced during the Catalan independence process of 2017.
Blázquez recalls that, in one of his opening speeches at the Plenary Assembly of the CEE, he used Adolfo Suárez’s epitaph, “Concord was possible,” to reflect on the need to preserve coexistence.
The cardinal believes that crisis dealt a severe blow to the concord built during the Transition.
“No closed blocs, no building walls, for we are the same society, we are the same people, we must work together,” he states.
And he concludes with a reflection that remains valid for present-day Spain: “Concord was possible. Concord is possible. And concord will be possible.”
The role of the laity and the evangelizing mission
The cardinal also recalls the Congress of the Laity held in February 2020 under the motto “People of God going forth,” which he considers an important moment to strengthen the participation and responsibility of the lay faithful in the Church’s mission.
Blázquez highlights that the proclamation of the Gospel does not belong solely to priests and bishops, but also requires the commitment of the baptized in the various spheres of society.
In this sense, he links that experience to Pope Francis’s insistence on co-responsibility and synodality.
The evangelizing mission, he maintains, requires the collaboration of all members of the Church, especially in a society where the Catholic faith no longer occupies the place it once held for generations.
Sixty years of the Spanish Episcopal Conference
The interview is part of the four videopodcasts prepared by the Spanish Episcopal Conference on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of its creation, in 1966, after the Second Vatican Council.
The series was produced by Ábside Media Producciones and brings together the testimonies of the institution’s most recent presidents.
After the interviews with Rouco Varela and Blázquez, the next episode will be dedicated to Cardinal Juan José Omella on November 4. The series will conclude on November 10 with the current president of the CEE, Monsignor Luis Argüello.
The four prelates will also participate in the documentary 60 years of the CEE: a shared history, whose premiere is scheduled around the next Plenary Assembly of the Spanish bishops, to be held from November 16 to 23.
Throughout his two presidencies, Blázquez had to face very different situations, from the political and educational tensions of the mid-2000s to the challenges of Pope Francis’s pontificate.
His testimony reflects the changes experienced by the Church in Spain in recent decades and places among his main concerns the transmission of the faith in a secularized society, the defense of marriage and the family, the increase in priestly vocations, and the need to responsibly address the abuses committed within the Church.