Wednesday, December 09, 2009

In Utroque Usu: St. Alphonsus, Middlesbrough

News came to the NLM today of a parish priest, Fr William Charlton, who is at the parish of St. Alphonsus in Middlesbrough (UK), and who is working hard at playing his own part in the new liturgical movement within that inner-city parish.

The first point of note is that his parish schedule regularly includes Masses in accordance with both forms of the Roman liturgy -- two Masses in the modern Roman liturgy on Sunday, and on Sunday evening at 6:00pm, the usus antiquior.

The parish has no website at the moment, but they recently released their Christmas and St. Stephen's Day schedule:



Aside from being of interest for showing us yet another parish that has adopted both forms of the Roman liturgy -- and will celebrate both forms this Christmas -- I would like to point to another aspect of what this parish is doing which is significant and simply splendid:



It is both magnificent and refreshing to see the Divine Office included as part of the parish's Christmas liturgies -- which in this instance is inclusive of both Vespers and Lauds let us note. Kudos to Fr. Charlton. If you are in this region of the UK, please do show up to St. Alphonsus' to show your support for Fr. Charlton.

Both the Mass and the Divine Office are important aspects of a new liturgical movement.

More recent articles:

For more articles, see the NLM archives: