Yes, I am late to the party, but...

in case some of you have slept in even later than me, the venerable Fr. Hunwicke has started blogging again since mid-November after a long dry spell following his unfortunate accident in Rome during the Fall of 2012.

Due to work I have been negligent in both the reading and writing of blog posts, but if anyone can draw me back to this, it is Fr. Hunwicke, whose posts are full of good humor, deep learning and earnest & godly counsel. Do follow him at http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com.

Hurray! Fr. Hunwicke's blogging returns!

The always erudite and witty Fr. Hunwicke's first post in many days is a delightful read:

...But back to the Birmingham Oratory. Fr Anton, the Parish Priest, very kindly made me free of 'the Cardinal's' study (with adjacent chapel). Little discoveries can be as satisfactory as large ones; we all know that on Monday December 3, Newman left Oxford for the foreign travels which led him to Sicily, serious illness, and the writing of Lead kindly light. The day before, he preached a University Sermon which could be regarded as the start of the Catholic Revival in the Church of England. But what was he doing on the preceding Saturday? I can now reveal the Truth. He was shopping ... for books. Devout tomes? Deary me, No. He bought a pocket copy of Thucydides; and one of Pindar. Isn't it a lovely mental picture; the slender, donnish, very English figure, sweat pouring down his face as he plodded round the bumps near Syracuse and traced (Thucydides in hand) the footprints of the ill-fated Athenian Expedition during the Peloponnesian War; then sitting in a cafe (I think I detected slight wine marks on some pages) and reading Pindar's mannered encomia upon the equestrian victories of Sicilian rulers in the Games.

Newman once said, I think, that he could never be a saint; because he loved literature too much. But Classicists, evidently, can become saints!...

Treat yourself and visit his blog Mutual Enrichment and read the whole post. If you were a member of the Anglican Use Society, you would also have been treated to his wonderful talk at last year's Anglican Use Society Conference, which was just published in Anglican Embers. Of course, you could register for this year's conference. Lots of other great speakers will be on hand in Kansas City November 8th through the 10th.

Laying hands on Fr Hunwicke

Only as a presbyter, of course. Fr John Hunwicke was ordained yesterday at the Church of St Aloysius at Oxford, the home of the Oxford Oratory, by Bishop William Kenney, Auxiliary in Birmingham.

Here he is, prostrate during the Litany of the Saints sung by Fr James Bradley:

The Newman Consort sang Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli for the Kyrie and Sanctus, and the plainchant Introit, Gradual, Offertory and Communion. At the anointing, they sang Iam non dicam vos servos by Dominique Phinot, and at Communion Byrd's Sacerdotes Domini. The singing was sublime and I was glad that I made the choice to attend in choro since I was able to listen to the music as part of my actuosa participatio. Fr Michael Mary and Brother Martin de Porres were also in choir, along with Fr Edward van den Bergh of the London Oratory. Concelebrants, in addition to priests of the Ordinariate, and priests from the Oratory, included Fr John Saward, Fr Aidan Nichols OP and Fr John Osman

The ceremony showed that the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham can teach many of us something about the Roman Liturgy. Having the propers sung in the proper place is routine for the Ordinariate at sung Masses. May their good example inspire parishes to discover the proper place of sacred music.

After Mass, along with the others present, I received Fr Hunwicke's blessing. I was glad to have made the journey to Oxford for the greater blessing of his priestly ordination which God has granted to the Church and for which many of us have been praying earnestly.

from Fr. Finigan's blog Hermenutic of Continuity.

Fr John Hunwicke ordained on June 27

Here are some photos from Fr. Hunwicke's ordination to the priesthood yesterday at the Oxford Oratory. Additional photos are available here.

Hat tip to Fr. Stephen Smuts.

Ordination and first Masses of John Hunwicke

from the Hermeneutic of Continuity blog.



Many of us have been looking forward eagerly to John Hunwicke's priestly ordination. Deo gratias this will be taking place next week on Wednesday 27 June at 7pm at the Oxford Oratory. I will be assisting at the Mass and one or two of my parishioners are going. Everyone is welcome so if you are in the area, do come.

Here, from Fr Hunwicke's Liturgical Notes is a further announcement:

Please come ... if you are able ... to the event mentioned in the previous post, in Oxford this coming Wednesday, June 27.

I ALSO ANNOUNCE that, Deo volente, I plan to celebrate

First Mass in the Extraordinary Form; London at the Brompton Oratory.
Low Mass, Thursday June 28, 11.30; by kind permission of the Provost.

First Mass in the Ordinary Form; Oxford in the Church of the Holy Rood.
Solemn Vigil Mass of Sunday, Saturday June 30, 6.00, by kind permission of Fr Paul King and Mgr Andrew Burnham. I plan also to preach.

Please! I would love to see as many friends, whether or not we have met in the flesh, as possible.

By the way (and I was corrected on this myself by a friend of Fr Hunwicke) if you have only so far met him virtually, the name is pronounced "Hunnick", the w being silent.

Rev (Fr-soon-to-be) John Hunwicke

Fr. Smuts reports on his blog about the soon to accomplished priesting of John Hunwicke. Fr. Hunwicke, in my estimation, is a wonderful example of an important part of the Anglican Patrimony: the priest-scholar represented by so many notables, starting with George Herbert and continuing on through John Henry Newman, John Mason Neale, Charles Winfred Douglas and Dom Gregory Dix. It is an aspect of the patrimony that should be continued.

Fr Gerard sent in the news via e-mail:

I thought you might like to know that John Hunwicke will be ordained priest on 7pm om Wednesday, June 27th at the Oxford Oratory

On his blog, Fr Hunwicke’s Liturgical Notes, he writes himself:

I trust, Deo volente, to be admitted to the Presbyterate of the Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham on Wednesday June 27, at 7.00, in the Oxford Oratory Church. It would help if priests willing to take part in the Laying On of Hands could let me know. I would be pleased if there were many.

Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham Posts List of Priestly Ordination candidates

The list of candidates to be ordained to the Sacred Priesthood in 2012 for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham has been posted on the Ordinariate web site. Among the 21 names it is very good to see the name of John Hunwicke. (Soon to be again) Father Hunwicke's erudition, pastoral sense and good humor will be a great boon to the Ordinariate and the Catholic Church.

Oxford University’s Latin Sermon

16 January 2012
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. John Hunwicke apparently received permission from Msgr. Newton of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham to preach Oxford University’s Latin Sermon from Newman’s pulpit.

The text (I received along with it the paraphrase, which is not my rendering):

Sunt autem, Oxonienses, et alii pro quibus Omnipotentem deprecari possimus. Mensis enim Ianuarii dies iam quintus decimus lucescit; qui dies quamquam non omnibus candidus laetitiam tamen nonnullis haud minimam adferre debet...

Read the full sermon in Latin (with an English "paraphrase") at the incomparable Fr. Z's blog What Does the Prayer Really Say?.

Fr. Hunwicke and the parish of St. Thomas Martyr...

have apparently declared their intention to enter the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. In Fr. Hunwicke's typically erudite and expansive prose, he writes:

Today we join in spirit the Christian people of sixth century Rome on a corporate visit to the Basilica of S Peter in Vaticano; to the church where, in the 1960s, the bones of a big and strong old man were found buried beneath a simple second century aedicula covered with Christian graffiti - some invoking S Peter. It is a church built over the Kephas, over the Petra, over the Rock.

Only a generation or so after S Peter's own martyrdom, an Eastern bishop came journeying to Rome; his name was Ignatius. He came as a pilgrim, but as a pilgrim in chains. He was being sent under guard to Rome to be made a martyr. On his way to Rome, he sent letters to the ccongregations he was passing; letters in which, time after time, he emphasised Unity. He urged them, always, to be united around their bishop. He reminded them that, in their local church, the bishop was always and essentially the centre of unity. Frankly, he says this so often that his letters can even become a trifle repetitively boring.

But, as S Ignatius approached Rome, he writes, to the Roman Church, quite a different sort of letter. It was brilliantly analysed back in the 1940s by one of our greatest Anglican Catholic theologians, Dom Gregory Dix. Dix pointed out something odd about it. In his letter to the Roman Church, S Ignatius uses a lot of the same words that he had used in his other letters to the other churches. But now he applies those words differently. If, in the earlier letters, he had used a particular word to refer to the Bishop as the centre of Unity for the Local Church, in his letter to the Roman Christians Ignatius now uses that same word to refer to ... the Roman Church. So that, if he had, earlier, called a local bishop prokathemenos in relation to his Local Church, he now calls the Roman Church prokathemene in relation to the Universal Church. And so on. In other words, in the Local Church, the Bishop is the centre and focus of Unity; in the Universal Church, Rome is the centre and focus of Unity. Dix writes: "Rome stands for ecumenical Unity ... Rome fulfills by its leadership precisely that function towards the Universal Church which the Bishop fulfills towards the Local Church".

in his post "A Final Sermon Extract: Quinquagesima.

In a second posting ("Viva! Viva Gesu!", he describes the procession to the shrine of St. Thomas and the Church Wardens laying down their staves of office (and highlights another aspect of the Anglican patrimony worth conserving in the ordinariates, to which I would add the office of parish clerk).