Showing posts with label Sarum Rite. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarum Rite. Show all posts

Friday, January 23, 2015

Historians Organize Petition to Inter Richard III with Catholic Rites

Edit:  Why not the Sarum Rite?  We were one of the first, if not the first, to suggest that a Catholic Bishop say the Sarum Rite to reinter Richard III. Archbishop Conti is familiar with the Sarum Rite.

Petition is organised by historians whose efforts led to the discovery of the king's remains
Three thousand people have signed a petition calling for Richard III to be given a Catholic burial.
The petition, addressed to Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, is being organised by the historians whose efforts led to the king’s remains being found under a car park in Leicester.
Under present plans Richard III, who died in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, before the Reformation, will be buried at the Anglican cathedral in Leicester on March 26.
But Philippa Langley, leader of the Looking for Richard project, said the burial should take into account Richard III’s Catholic faith.
She said: “It seems this former king and head of state is to be treated as a scientific specimen right up to and including the point at which he is laid in his coffin.”
Dr John Ashdown-Hill, a historian who worked to identify the bones, has also called for a Catholic burial, saying: “There is a lot of evidence that Richard III had a very serious personal faith. If Richard III had not have died, maybe the Anglican church would never have existed.”
However, a joint statement by Leicester Cathedral and the Catholic Diocese of Nottingham said these concerns were “fundamentally misplaced”.
The statement said: “There is no requirement in the Catholic tradition for prayers to be said at the coffining of human remains, including those of a monarch. The arrangements agreed between the university and the cathedral have the full support of the Catholic Church.”
Ecumenical services will surround the event, with Cardinal Nichols preaching a service of compline on the day the king’s remains are received into the cathedral.
The cardinal will also celebrate a Requiem Mass the next day at a nearby Catholic parish.

Link to Catholic Herald...

Link to Petition....

Link to Ashdown-Hill's page on Richard III....

Monday, October 29, 2012

The Injustices of the Protestant Revolt Continue: Richard III to be Buried in Protestant Church

Richard III
From Wiki, public domain.
Edit: The current story of the finding of Richard III at BBC, the Telegraph,  is a story of forensics.  Many are no doubt interested, for the fascination which is history, to find out if the body which has been exhumed is indeed that of the last English King slain in battle, but it's also a forensic question of religion.   The church itself, which is Greyfriars church in Leicester, was destroyed during the Protestant Revolt. Richard III was himself not a protestant, and had he lived to see the Protestant Revolt which disturbed his final resting place and lost his bones to posterity in the first place, it is very possible he would have reacted quite differently than his successors of the family which usurped him by keeping England in the proper religion.

As one reader informs us, since Leicester was a Dominican establishment, it's unclear why local Dominicans haven't raised any objections, but things being as they are in the Catholic Church these days, it's perhaps not surprising.  They do say the Immemorial Mass of All Ages, which is a Mass Richard III would have recognized.

While waiting for a confirmation as to whether or not the recently discovered remains are indeed those of the English Monarch, Richard III, there is at least the confirmation that he will be interred in Leicester Cathedral, an Anglican Settlement.

Earlier, in September, before anyone else, we suggested that the King should not be interred in a Protestant church with their rites, which Richard III would likely not have approved or wanted to participate in as a Roman Catholic.  In any case, given the growing influence of the Catholic Church in the UK and the increasing insignificance of the Anglican Church, it would be a wonderful ecumenical gesture on the part of the Church of England to allow us to bury one of our own, however villainous he might have been.

Moreover, there is still a Bishop who is familiar with the Sarum Rite, who is capable of performing the Mass.  His Lordship, Bishop Conti, is certainly available for such a service and has said the ancient and disused Rite before.  There were suggestions about a York Rite, but there is no one alive who is familiar with it.

Indeed, since aboriginals receive preferential consideration when it comes to these questions, shouldn't Catholics, who've been so brutally persecuted in English history, also receive some due consideration? It's unlikely that this will sway anyone's mind, but at least it serves to point out the hypocrisy.

It's also the case, if any are concerned of such things in the Catholic hierarchy in England, that since Richard III is a Catholic, his body being christened, his forehead being sealed with confession, his lips uttering our holy prayers, and his knees bent in veneration to our Saints.  It was perhaps as he died, that he may have uttered an act of contrition for his sins.

It would also be an interesting point, since Richard III was a Catholic, that the Sarum Rite, which was widely the use of his time and how he was buried, be revived to accommodate him.   It is of course, in such a Mass, that prayers, getting back to the idea of forensics, could be recited for this Catholic King, which might serve for his salvation, which is, after all, what the Church is for.

Reinterring the King according to the Rite he knew, in his own religion is not only just in purely human terms, but it is also the right thing to do in God's own time.