General

Date: Monday, August 15th, 2022
Feast: The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Please note

Mass Time: 12:00 pm (Noon)

 

If you downloaded or picked up copy of the Newsletter before Easter Sunday evening, which is quite likely, please note, some times have been amended and you ought to refer to this new version: Revised Version

Canon Wiener will be leaving Shrewsbury between August 8th and August 28th to visit Germany and to attend the chapter in Gricigliano. Please pray for the superiors of the Institute and all canons attending this year’s chapter as also for Canon Wiener’s safe return to Shrewsbury.

During Canon’s absence Father Anselm Gribbin will return to Shrewsbury to celebrate all weekday Masses between Wednesday, August 11th, and Sunday, August 22nd (incl.). The Masses on August 9th and 10th had to be cancelled.

During the chapter meeting, Father Gerard McGuiness most generously agreed on coming to St. Winefriede’s to celebrate the daily Masses between Monday, August 23rd and Saturday, August 28th (incl.). The usual Mass schedule applies. However, the Adoration and Benediction on Tuesday, August 24th and August 26th has had to be cancelled.

On Sunday, August 29th, Father Stephen Goodman of the Archdiocese of Birmingham (Wolverhampton) will come to us to celebrate the Mass at 12:30pm. We are most grateful for Father’s generous offer to assist Canon Wiener who, due to COVID travel restrictions, will not be able to celebrate publicly for several days after his return. Father Gribbin will celebrate the weekday Masses of August 30th to September 4th.

In the year 1251 Our Lady appeared to St. Simon Stock, an Englishman and Prior of Carmelite Order. She handed him a brown woolen scapular and said, “This shall be a privilege for you and all Carmelites, that anyone dying in this habit shall not suffer eternal fire.” In time, the Church extended this magnificent privilege to all the laity who are willing to be invested in the Brown Scapular of the Carmelites and who perpetually wear it.

The Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel has promised to save those who wear the scapular from the fires of hell and to shorten their stay in purgatory if they should pass from this world still owing some debt of punishment.This promise is found in a Bull of Pope John XXII. The Blessed Virgin appeared to him and, speaking of those who wear the Brown Scapular, said, “I, the Mother of Grace, shall descend on the Saturday after their death and whomsoever I shall find in purgatory I shall free so that I may lead them to the holy mountain of life everlasting.”

Unlike typical sacramentals, scapulars are not merely blessed, but need to be invested/imposed by a priest to enroll the faithful.Any Catholic priest may invest a baptized Catholic with the Brown Scapular. Lay people are unable to bless a Scapular

On Sunday, July 18th 2021 after the 12:30pm Sung Mass at St Winefride’s there will be an enrolment for those wishing to avail of this powerful sacramental. Scapulars will be available on the date.

During the week of Monday, June 14th to Friday, June 18th scaffolding will be erected in the Cathedral. Masses in the Extraordinary Form (Adoration/Benediction included) will be transferred to St. Winefride’s church according to the usual schedule:

Monday: 10:00am Holy Mass
Tuesday: 6:30pm Holy Mass; (5:30-6:15p Adoration/Benediction)
Wednesday: 10:00am Holy Mass
Thursday: 6:30pm Holy Mass; (5:30-6:15pm Adoration/Benediction)
Friday: 10:00am Holy Mass

Christmas can never be cancelled even in the most unfavourable of conditions, the Bishop of Shrewsbury said in his Christmas homily.

During midnight Mass at Shrewsbury Cathedral, the Rt Rev. Mark Davies acknowledged that it is “easy to focus on the dark shadows” of 2020.

But he reminded the congregation that Christmas leads the faithful back to the “point of light” that shines in all our darkness, the child born for us all.

“Christmas can never be cancelled,” Bishop Davies said, “for its light is not dependent on favourable conditions for even the darkness makes its light shine the more brightly”.

Besides the coronavirus pandemic, the Bishop also lamented attempts over the passing year to extend abortion and the renewed efforts to legalise assisted suicide as assaults upon the sanctity of human life.

He reminded the faithful that the modern nursing and medical profession was inspired by Christian belief in the value and inviolability of innocent human life and for the care of the weakest and most vulnerable in society.

The dedicated service and self-sacrifice shown by medical professionals in helping the victims of Covid-19 stood in a stark contrast to the “culture of death and despair,” the Bishop said.

He encouraged people either attending the Christmas Mass in person or viewing by live-stream to heed the words of Pope Francis in his Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde, of December 8, and to share with St Joseph the responsibility for “every poor, needy, suffering or dying person, every stranger, every prisoner, every infirm person” in whom the Child Jesus can be recognised.

Also echoing the hopes of Pope Francis, the Bishop said that “a new vision of fraternity and social friendship” which recognises how all the lives of all people are bound together is the antidote to “present-day attempts to eliminate or ignore others”.

“This is surely a happy lesson to be drawn from the trauma of the past year,” the Bishop said.

Bishop Davies said: “At the cradle of Bethlehem, we have learnt to value the life and dignity of every human being, especially the weakest and most vulnerable. The recognition of the sanctity of human life and the cherishing of the frailest – both notions utterly unthinkable to the ancient mind – would become the light which forged our civilisation; the vision, which first inspired our medical and nursing professions and has guided our best efforts in response to the recent pandemic.

“For we heard the voice of the same Child of Bethlehem say, ‘Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me’. And we now see the stark contrast between a culture of death and despair, which readily discards human life, and that spirit of charity and self-giving service Christ’s coming inspired: a contrast between darkness and light.”

He said: “How precarious Christian civilisation can appear in the face of an ever-growing assault upon the value of human life whether in the extension of the legalised killing of the unborn; or in the increasing threat to the elderly and vulnerable by euthanasia under the guise of ‘assisted suicide’.”

The bishop added: “Amid every lengthening shadow, may we never lose the light of the Child who was born for us, who allows us to glimpse who we really are and discover our deepest identity as children of God. At this Christmas of 2020 and in the face of the challenges of a New Year to come, may we return to the light which first dawned in Bethlehem, the same light which shines for us at every ‘Christ’s Mass’.”