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Association for Latin Liturgy
St Anne’s Cathedral, Leeds
Feast of St Mark, 25th April, 2026
I was very much encouraged by the booklet which Bishop Marcus was kind enough to send me with the music and the texts for today’s Mass: the language Latin; lots of chant but Mozart and polyphony included as well.
This congregation hardly needs reminding of what Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Liturgy, has to say about Latin.
The use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites. [SC 36]
Nor about what it has to say about Sacred Music.
The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. Other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action. [SC 116]
So we should ask ourselves the question, “Why is a Mass like this the exception rather than the norm?” How is it that in the Latin West there is so little respect for our own traditions? The liturgical life of much of the Western Church as we find it in most parishes today is clearly not what the Council intended.
I would like to wish Bishop Marcus a Happy Feast Day and to thank him and my Oratorian Brother, Fr Guy Nicholls, for giving me the opportunity to consider this question in the context of a celebration of the Feast of St Mark.
This is not the first time I have been asked to do something in honour of St Mark. The first time was, if you can believe that possible, even more exciting and exotic than an invitation to preach in Leeds Cathedral. It involved something even more interesting than Venice, the city, perhaps, which we most associate with St Mark and where most of his relics are enshrined. St Mark’s Venetian emblem, the lion and the book, appear on our bishop’s Episcopal Coat of Arms.
Bishop Marcus and Fr. Guy will both remember the late Monsignor Mark Langham who died some years ago, much too young. When he was Administrator of Westminster Cathedral, he was leading a pilgrimage of the Friends of the Cathedral in the footsteps of his patron, St Mark, who by tradition was the disciple of St Peter and evangelised North Africa. Our pilgrim group was to visit Egypt and Libya.
I forget now why Mark had to withdraw from the trip at short notice, but I was asked to step in and take his place. This adventurous journey produced a fund of stories. I could keep us here all afternoon with traveller’s tales; but I will limit myself to one anecdote from this pilgrimage in the footsteps of St Mark which think tells us something about the importance of Masses like one we are celebrating today.
On a guided tour of one of the many monasteries where the Holy Family is said to have rested during the Flight into Egypt, I made a rather injudicious remark about the Council of Chalcedon to the Coptic Orthodox monk who was guiding us.
I was rightly corrected for my indiscretion.
Had I not read the 1973 Catholic/Coptic joint Declaration on the Interpretation of the Council of Chalcedon, signed by the successor of Saint Peter, Pope Paul VI together with the successor of Saint Mark, Pope Shenouda III?
Both churches confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is perfect in His divinity and perfect in His humanity, truly God and truly man, with His divinity and humanity united in one person without mingling, confusion, or division.
Had I not read the Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio?
Perhaps he was thinking about this passage:
The very rich liturgical and spiritual heritage of the Eastern Churches should be known, venerated, preserved and cherished by all. They must recognize that this is of supreme importance for the faithful preservation of the fullness of Christian tradition, and for bringing about reconciliation between Eastern and Western Christians. [UR15]
It turned out that our guide was the monk responsible for ecumenical relations in the Coptic Orthodox Church. I had dropped a christological clanger in very much the wrong company.
What was so compelling about this distinguished monk’s words was the evident love for his own tradition; his understanding that this was what had sustained his people through centuries of often brutal occupation by Romans and Greeks, Byzantines and Muslims (of many kinds) from the Saracens to the Ottomans.
The Coptic Church has a fascinating tradition. They use a language more ancient than Latin or Greek (related to the language of the Pharaohs); they have architecture many of whose element derive from the buildings of ancient Egypt; and an artistic heritage largely untouched (unlike that of either the Greek East or the Latin West) by the influence of iconoclasm. They have abandoned none of this. Their tradition has continued to give them encouragement through times of persecution and marginalisation, which make the history of the Catholic Church in the Western World, even in England, look positively calm. Why have they clung so tenaciously to their traditions while we in the West have not?
Moving nearer to the present time and place, we have, as a matter of fact, Coptic Christians among us in both the Leeds and Middlesbrough Dioceses.
Some years ago, on my day off, deciding to walk the some of the coastal path between Scarborough and Robin Hoods Bay, I was surprised to see from the road a sign which said “Monastery - 5 Miles”. I couldn’t think what it could be. My curiosity was aroused, so I made a diversion and discovered a Coptic Orthodox Monastery in the remote Forge Valley behind Scarborough.
The monks were very welcoming and asked me to stay for Divine Office. Wisely, I declined. Even on a weekday it takes several hours! But they invited me to bring a group of students from the University of York for a visit. Some months later, I did. (We are going again in a few weeks’ time.)
My chief motive for accepting the invitation was to expose the students (who included Catholics, Anglicans and Methodists) to an ancient tradition including some Eastern Liturgy and clear apostolic teaching. I wanted to expose them to the kind of worship and doctrine of whose significance they mostly remain ignorant - and to raise in their minds questions similar to the this recurring theme: “Why do some (evidently strong and flourishing) churches preserve their ancient liturgy and traditions and others do not?”
I was not disappointed. This Coptic monk was able to command respectful attention. He had important things to say which (had I said them myself) would have been met with “Oh well, he would say that he’s an Oratorian.” How easily we dismiss tradition - in much the same way as some elements of Sacrosanctum Concilium are regularly dismissed with the implication that these are things the Church feels obliged to day without really being convinced of their truth. The experience of these Egyptian monks contradicts this view and contradicts it with conviction.
The monk spoke with authority because he was clearly part of a lived and living tradition, a tradition which includes recent memories of real persecution, isolation and martyrdom.
(You will recall the twenty-one Coptic Christian martyrs of Libya, mostly Egyptian construction workers, who - in 2015 - were beheaded by Islamic State militants on a beach in Libya, after refusing to renounce their faith.)
The numbers of people - mostly young people - baptised or received into full communion in this Cathedral Church a few weeks ago suggests that perhaps some are coming to see the value of tradition in a rudderless and chaotic world. They are not looking for watered down doctrine or a liturgy which does not challenge them with the words our blessed Lord used to St Peter: “Duc in altum” - cast your nets out into the deep.
When Simon Peter saw (the miraculous catch) he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. For he was astonished….
A faith like faith of St Peter or of St Mark is apostolic and evangelistic, which is to say rooted in tradition and fearless in proclamation.
Peter is proclaiming the same message today as he did two thousand years ago. “Cast out your nets into the deep.” You will be astonished.
Only a year ago, our new Pope Leo was elected. A week after that he had these words to say at the Jubilee of the Eastern Churches:
The contribution that the Christian East can offer us today is immense! We have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty! It is likewise important to rediscover, especially in the Christian West, a sense of the primacy of God, the importance of mystagogy and the values so typical of Eastern spirituality: constant intercession, penance, fasting, and weeping for one’s own sins and for those of all humanity! It is vital, then, that you preserve your traditions without attenuating them, for the sake perhaps of practicality or convenience, lest they be corrupted by the mentality of consumerism and utilitarianism. [Leo XIV Jubilee of Eastern Churches, May 14, 2025]
May Pope Leo’s words not be dismissed or ignored. May we be preserved from that spirit of convenience and utilitarianism that so often leads the Church to be dismissive of tradition whose power is so clearly manifest among St Mark’s Coptic Christians and the other Churches of the East. For it is that corrosive spirit which is the answer to the question why a Mass like this is the exception rather than the norm in today’s Church.
Our Lord continues to challenge us, through St Peter, through the Pope, through the witness of the Church: Duc in altum! Put out into the depths of the goodness, truth and beauty of the Catholic faith! Be astonished by the miraculous haul! Kneel and adore!
