The following is a statement from Mr Paul Beardsmore, Secretary of the Latin Mass Society:
1. The LMS Committee has not cancelled the Oxford Training Conference, and Merton College has not indicated to the Society that permission to hold the Conference has been withdrawn.
2. Mr David Lloyd’s views concerning the Oxford Conference held in July 2008 were considered by the LMS Committee three months ago and did not receive the support of the majority of its members.
3. The LMS Committee – including Mr Lloyd – is unanimous in its commitment to the implementation of the Motu Proprio, ‘Summorum Pontificum’, and consequently to the training of clergy to celebrate Mass in the Extraordinary Form.
4. The leaking to the press of Mr Lloyd’s confidential e mail, and the attempt to link this e mail with the LMS Committee’s recent decision concerning the administrative arrangements for the Conference are mischievous.
3 comments:
This LMS statement begs more questions than it answers. Holy Smoke asks some pretty pertinent ones to this debate:
1. How does the LMS intend to hold its training conference at Merton College when the Chaplain of Merton has withdrawn his permission for the LMS to use the chapel as a direct consequence of the Committee’s recent sackings?
2. Does Mr Lloyd hold his views now? If they are not supported by the Committee, why has he not resigned?
3. Is it not true that at least one LMS Committee member has proposed that the Society ask Pope Benedict to rescind Summorum Pontificum’s permission for vernacular readings? If so, how can the committee be “unanimous” in its committment to the implementation of the Motu Proprio?
4. Will the LMS publish – at least to their membership – the minutes of its meeting on December 6th so that the true positions of each of its committee members and the reasons for its decisions can be known?
5. Why not retain the “winning team” of Wadsworth, Reid and Hemming and avoid all this division and scandal and have another “gold standard” training conference in 2009 like those of 2007/8, if the Committee does not share Lloyd’s views?
1. If the chaplain has withdrawn his permission in a fit of pique then he's probably not the sort of person the LMS should be dealing with in the first place. There are, in fact, plenty of other chapels in Oxford.
2. It doesn't matter one way or the other. These views are clearly not shared by a majority of members of the Committee or of the LMS.
3. Ditto. (This is almost certainly from another leak, quite possibly from the same person who leaked Lloyd's e-mail. One can of course propose a motion and then vote with the majority after discussion. It sounds unlikely anyway.)
4. I'd have thought not. Committee meetings should be private anyway so that the Committee can discuss matters affecting the Society without fear or favour. But clearly the minutes of this meeting in particular would cause certain parties huge embarrassment, not to say scandal for the Society and the Church generally.
5. The Committee may not share Mr Lloyd's view that the conference was "elitist" and/or a waste of money. There are however clearly other points that the Committee was forced to consider.
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