Static Website on its way out

Posted on Tuesday, 17 February, 2026 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have cancelled the website As the Sun in its Orb for reasons of the host’s subscriptions tripling over the past couple of years. Here are the two main pages, but many of the links will soon be dead. If you write a comment and ask me for the text in question, I will send it. The links to outside sites will still work.

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The Use of Sarum

The Church of Salisbury shines as the sun in its orb among the Churches of the whole world in its divine service and those who minister it, and by spreading its rays everywhere makes up for the defects of others. Bishop Giles de Bridport c.1256

This page has been around for about eight years, during which quite a lot of water flowed under the bridge. In 2005, I joined the TAC directly under Archbishop Hepworth’s Patrimony of the Primate and attended the College of Bishops meeting in Portsmouth in October 2007, officially as a translator. Bishop Peter Elliott, an Australian Roman Catholic prelate and former Anglican, encouraged hopes that Sarum would at least be an option in the yet future Ordinariates. Disillusioned in late 2011 and 2012 and “orphaned” by the Archbishop’s downfall, I did not apply to the Ordinariate but joined the ACC in April 2013. At this stage, I separate my work of reviving the Use of Sarum from my ecclesiastical title as a priest. I celebrate the Use of Sarum with the blessing of my Bishop, but it is not my Church’s official rite.

Time has shaped and developed my essential philosophy of this question, my attitude in regard to liturgical codification and reform as was characteristic of the Reformation;, the Counter-Reformation and the Liturgical Movement of the twentieth century. I go into these considerations in my introduction, because Sarum and other historical local rites are not for me a mere subject of academic study.

The question of reviving the present-day use of the Sarum liturgy is one of both love and hate. Most Anglicans and Roman Catholics, especially English and American, have been trained that positive law and authority outweigh jurisprudence and immemorial custom. There is also the notion that a custom falls if it is not maintained continuously, leaving only the 1570-1962 Roman liturgy, the Novus Ordo, the various Anglican Prayer Books or the new or experimental service books containing creations by liturgical “experts”. For me and a few others, there is a true need to revive medieval liturgical usages in the same spirit as the rites of Milan, the Dominicans, Rouen and the prevailing situation in France up to the mid nineteenth century (some remnants of local usages survived in areas like Normandy until the 1990’s).

There is no prospect of any large-scale revival of Sarum, even in the Continuing Anglican Churches. It will be gone again when I “kick the bucket” and my own use of it is irrelevant since I do not have a stable community of clerics and lay people. The greatest hope is continuing the work of university dons in the mid nineteenth century, men like Percy Dearmer and those who were influenced by the Arts & Crafts movement that fell into irrelevance on the outbreak of World War I. This site is intended to help keep the pot simmering, as is the purpose of some sites to which I link.

Sarum liturgical books are hard to find, and when they do turn up as rare books in second-hand bookshops, the asking price is often high. The Latin edition by Dickinson and the English editions by Warren and Pearson are available from the Internet in pdf format. It suffices to collate the pages into a DTP programme and bind the books. Work is being done to publish Sarum texts and the plainchant books for both the Mass and the Office.

This part of my site is dedicated to promoting the Use of Sarum and helping readers to understand its significance in the Anglican patrimony as a liturgical standard for supplementing familiar Anglican rites and usages, the Prayer Book in particular.

I will add files to this page from time to time, and will also collate valuable material from my Sarum e-mail list and its archives.

Facebook groups

Use of Sarum with 448 members as of September 2016. Another group worth joining is Medieval Catholicism and Culture with 2,569 members.

Blog posts on Sarum and Liturgy

Major Resources

  • The Sarum Rite by Dr William Renwick. This is a monumental ongoing project of making the Sarum Missal and Breviary, complete with the plainsong notation from the Gradual and Antiphoner, available for practical use and study. These books are being done both in Latin and classical English. This site also contains a liturgical calendar for each year following the Gregorian computation. All pages can be downloaded in pdf format.
  • Vitrearum’s Medieval Art – “Articles, links and features about all aspects of medieval and medieval revival church art.” Rev’d Allan Barton.
  • My own ongoing project of compiling a complete Sarum missal designed to be practical at the altar (keeping cross references to a minimum). The translation is that of Canon Warren (see below) and the King James Bible for the lessons, epistles and gospels. These are unfinished compilations in Word (doc) format: Temporal and Sanctoral. These texts may be copied into booklets or other formats as needed. I have just added the Order of Mass in its full version with the rubrics and a simplified version for use at the altar which presumes that the priest has learned the ceremonies.

Most of the links below from archive.org open pages with available texts (no longer under copyright) in various formats including pdf or text format for re-editing and printing.

 

Videos and Practical

 

Further reflections

Please note, as mentioned above, these “reflections” were written in 2011-2012 when I was in the TAC and Archbishop Hepworth’s situation was not yet clear. There were still naïve hopes that Anglicanorum coetibus would involve the corporate union of the TAC with Rome in spite of Archbishop Hepworth’s irregular situation as a former Roman Catholic priest and being divorced and remarried. Having left the TAC to join the ACC, I am no longer thinking in that perspective (the Ordinariates are what they are), but I see little point in rewriting these articles. We all change as circumstances force us to evolve and learn in life.

 

To study the Use of Sarum

I recommend the following links to articles about Sarum (academic and historical):

Files to copy onto your hard disk

Right button of your mouse – Save target as…

Practical Sarum Revival work – Victorian Ritualism and in our own time : links to choral groups, interested laymen and priests

Victorian Ritualist era

[Note: Percy Dearmer did not attempt to revive the Use of Sarum, but to adapt the Prayer Book by the introduction of Sarum customs.]

Contemporary

“NIHIL OPERI DEI PRAEPONATUR”

Let nothing be preferred to the Work of God

(Rule of Saint Benedict, 43)

Home page

 

Reform of the Reform

In this section, I will be publishing some of my own reflections together with other Roman Catholic and Anglican commentators.

History of the Liturgy

Here are a few links on topics related to liturgical history.

Victorian Anglican Ritualism

This following link from the Canterbury Project gives information on some of the leading protagonists of Victorian Anglican ritualism together with some texts from the period.

 

Musical Resources for the liturgy in English and Latin

  • Musica Sacra – The “Chant Books” section is amazing, as is this whole site.

 

The Reforms of Pius XII and John XXIII

The reforms to the Missal and Breviary in the 1950’s and early 60’s were not universally welcomed, as attested by a criticism dating from 1960.

The Post-Conciliar Reforms

The reforms by Paul VI and John Paul II have caused a considerable amount of contestation. I include here a paper on the subject that expresses original thought.

The Roman Rite

Since the summer of 2007, there are two officially recognised “uses” of the Roman rite in the Roman Catholic Church: the “extraordinary use” (1570-1962) and the “ordinary use” (1969).

  • The Canonical Mass of the English Orthodox by Dr. Raymond Winch (pdf file). This was an attempt dating from 1988 at reconstructing the Mass of Ordo Romanus Primus and the Gregorian Sacramentary for use in a western rite Orthodox context.
  • The Latin Rite Mass – what was in use in the Roman Catholic Church until Vatican II, and still used by a number of traditionalist communities. In 1969 Pope Paul VI replaced it by a newly composed Novus Ordo.
  • Roman Rite (1570) – amost identical with the Ordo Missae of the 1474 Princeps Edition, broadly speaking a restoration of the Roman liturgy of the 11th century, but with a number of new elements derived from existing use and scholastic theology. It was codified by Pope St Pius V following the directives of the Council of Trent.
  • Tridentine Latin Mass Project – a site containing texts from the Roman Missal in Latin and English.
  • Novus Ordo (1969) – the work of Msgr Annabile Bugnini and the Consilium, promulgated by Paul VI in 1969. This artificial rite is now the official usage of the Roman Catholic Church (“Latin” Rite), and its refusal motivated the existence of a traditionalist movement. The Vatican allows the usage of the 1962 edition of John XXIII (simplified calendar and rubrics, new 1955 Holy Week ceremonies of Bugnini / Pius XII)
  • Altar cards for the old Roman Mass (Latin) in Microsoft Publisher 2000 format : file – Click with your right mouse button to save the file onto your hard disk. Note: this file works only with MS Publisher (part of the Office 2000 package). You must adapt the printer and page setup parameters to your own system, and you can change the text style and size within the contraints of the text frames and general size desired. Click here for the altarcards in pdf format – but this file cannot be modified and is designed for European A4 paper format. Then print the cards on off-white or cream coloured paper and frame them.
  • Learn how to celebrate the Tridentine Mass (the same rules apply to the English Missal)

Non-Roman Latin Rites

  • Lyons Rite – of the Archdiocese of Lyons (France) and surrounding area. St Jean Viannay, the Curé d’Ars, celebrated according to this rite. Note certain similarities with the Dominican rite.
  • Dominican Rite – the rite of the Order of Preachers. It is used by the Fraternity of St. Vincent Ferrer (Chemeré-le-Roi, France), by the SSPX Dominicans at Avrillé near Angers, France, and by a few Dominican priests in Rome and elsewhere. It is strikingly similar to Sarum and other diocesan uses, but is based on 13th century Roman usage.
  • The Dominican Liturgy Blog – Fr. Augustine Thompson OP
  • Ambrosian Rite – the rite of the Archdiocese of Milan until its reform on Novus Ordo lines around 1970. It had been used in much of the north of Italy and Switzerland, and a few parts of southern France. It was found used in the English parish of Telford in the 15th century. We are informed that there are some textual errors in this page. Use www.google.com to find alternative versions.
  • Mozarabic Rite (Toledo, Spain) – the rite of the Cathedral of Toledo, Spain, used once a year in a special chapel since being replaced by the Roman Rite.

The Use of Sarum

 

Post-Reformation Anglican Liturgies

  • I have added this small section dedicated to the diverse world of Anglican liturgies. I have counted the Use of Sarum as an Anglican rite, since it was used during the Henrican schism from 1534 to 1549 before being replaced by Cranmer’s first reformed Prayer Book.
  • The Anglican Use of the Pastoral Provision – a special rite of Mass authorized by Rome in 1980 for a handful of convert Episcopalian parishes in the USA. It includes the offertory rite and the Consecration formula from the Novus Ordo, but with a classical English translation of the Roman Canon.
  • An Anglican Liturgical Library – all the Rites used in the Worldwide Anglican Communion
  • The Book of Common Prayer – another resource, from the Use of Sarum to the most modern rites
  • Anglican Breviary – promoting the traditional Latin Rite Breviary in Anglican style English and its recitation by the faithful
  • The English Office – a reprint of an extremely rare book, the Prayer Books Offices of Mattins and Evensong with additional material (antiphons, hymns, prayers, etc.).
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Liturgical Beauty and Homosexuality

Posted on Tuesday, 30 December, 2025 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

A few days ago, I found this horrifying text on Facebook. It is a question asked of an internet-based AI system. AI plagiarises everything it has received from human writings, and then uses an algorithm to imitate human reasoning. It might seem uncanny but it smells “off”. Read the text for yourself with a bucket at your side and ready for if you feel sick :

An interesting response shared from GeminiAI:

Why are homosexuals attracted to Latin Mass and Anglo Catholic culture?

The attraction of gay men to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and Anglo-Catholicism is a well-documented phenomenon that historians and sociologists often call the “Bells and Smells” affinity. This connection is not usually about agreeing with conservative politics, but rather a deep-seated pull toward aesthetics, mystery, and historical sanctuary.

Here are the primary reasons for this attraction:

  1. The “Aesthetic of Resistance”

Historically, high-church environments (with their incense, ornate vestments, and elaborate choreography) offered a space that felt “separate” from the mundane, often judgmental world.

* Sensory Richness: For many, the visual and auditory beauty of a Solemn High Mass or a Latin liturgy provides an emotional and “queer” sensibility—a focus on drama and beauty that contrasts with the “beige,” utilitarian feel of many modern churches.

* Symbolic Language: In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Anglo-Catholicism was a subculture where men could express a “difference” through symbolism, ritual, and art without having to use explicit labels that were socially dangerous at the time.

  1. Homosocial Spaces and Celibacy

Historically, the priesthood and monastic life offered a “religiously sanctioned” alternative to marriage.

* A Way Out: Before gay identity was widely accepted, becoming a priest or monk was a way for a man to avoid the social pressure to marry a woman while still maintaining high social status.

* Intellectual and Fraternal Bonds: High-church traditions often emphasize intense, chaste male friendships and “homosocial” environments (all-male choirs, guilds, and clergy houses), which provided a sense of community and belonging.

  1. Objective Truth vs. Personal Judgement

While it might seem counterintuitive for gay people to seek out “traditional” or “strict” spaces, the formalism of the Latin Mass can actually feel safer for some:

* The “Privacy” of Ritual: In a traditional Latin Mass, the priest faces away from the congregation (ad orientem), and the liturgy is fixed and unchanging. There is less “personal” interaction or focus on the individual’s private life compared to a modern, “low-church” evangelical setting where there is often a high pressure for personal testimony and social scrutiny.

* Transcendence: The focus is on the “Mystery of God” rather than the “Community of Man.” For someone who feels like an outsider in society, a liturgy that ignores the modern world entirely can be a profound relief.

  1. The “Anglo-Catholic” Exception

In the Anglican/Episcopal tradition, Anglo-Catholicism has a specific history of being “High Church but Open.” * While Roman Catholic traditionalism is often doctrinally rigid, many Anglo-Catholic parishes (especially in the UK and US) are “Affirming.” They keep the incense, the Latin, and the gold vestments but are fully inclusive of LGBTQ+ people.

* This allows individuals to have the maximalist religious experience they love without the doctrinal rejection they fear.

Key Historical Figures

Several famous gay or bisexual figures were deeply attracted to these high-church aesthetics, viewing them as a refuge for the soul:

* Oscar Wilde: Drawn to the “theatricality” and beauty of Catholicism throughout his life, eventually converting on his deathbed.

* John Henry Newman: A leader of the Oxford Movement (the birth of Anglo-Catholicism) whose intense male friendships are often studied by queer historians.

* T.S. Eliot: An Anglo-Catholic whose poetry deeply reflects the tension between traditional form and modern identity.

Would you like to know more about the “Oxford Movement” and how it changed the way people experienced the church?

* * *

My first critical impression of this text is the dialectic polarised mentality of many of our contemporaries. It is the “all-or-nothing” without any nuance or consideration of the imaginative and creative mind. My immediate reaction is that it can go either way : a claim by the “queer”, “LGBTQ+” world over a liturgical Christianity ignoring that many gentle and sensitive heterosexual people can also be attracted to the same without being aggressive ideologues and rigid bigots – the other position perhaps implied as might be expressed by low-church Anglicans and progressive Roman Catholics would be that high-church liturgy and aesthetics are immoral by association. The terms used like queer and the acronym LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and more) would suggest the former of the two positions.

I am quite puzzled by the use of the term queer, originally used to mean bizarre, odd or abnormal. We hear in Yorkshire There’s now’t so queer as folk, meaning that other people are not necessarily homosexual but hard to understand because of eccentricities or particularities. It then became used pejoratively to designate people who deviated from heterosexuality. In the 1920’s and 30’s, the word would be used by homosexual men to differentiate themselves from effeminate or “camp” men, to award themselves a title of middle class respectability and discretion. After World War II, queer in this meaning fell out of fashion and was eventually replaced by the word gay. Queer came again to be used pejoratively by heterosexual people in regard to any known homosexual. “Are you queer ? I’ll smash your face in, you puff !”

In our own century, it has been used by homosexual people as an identifying label. The word was then extended to describe cultural and political interests. The word is contained in the LGBTQ+ acronym. It seems to be associated with radical gender and sexual identity liberation, but not exclusively.

One puzzling use of this word is to make a verb of it, queering or to queer. It is used in academia as an interpretive key to read and understand texts and literature from a viewpoint other than heterosexual. It moved from gender and sexuality to other systems of oppression and identity politics. It is a part of what some call “Woke” ideology, perhaps inspired by Marxist critical theory. I personally refuse all these terms and other slogans and words used to draw people into mass collectivist ideologies.

Perhaps, some who follow these ideologies or allow themselves to be known as homosexuals are attracted to “camp” Bells and Smells Anglo-Catholicism.

My dears, next Sunday, we have, not one, but two bishops and an orchestra!

If it hangs, put a tassel on it. If it moves, incense it.

I have heard such things in London churches displaying an extreme degree of shallowness.

An “Aesthetic of Resistance” ? This is not a concept with which I am familiar – taking refuge from the modern world of brutalism and ugliness. Perhaps these were characteristics that drew working class people in the Victorian era living in the slums in dire poverty. Anglican priests  of that era led exemplary spiritual lives and risked everything for illegal liturgical practices or rites other than the plain low-church 1662 Prayer Book. What I want to say is that many of us are attracted by liturgical beauty without identifying in any particular way in our personal lives.

In the past, a layman who was not married by a certain age was considered as suspect. The celibate priesthood and monastic life have often been accused as providing a cover. I have known many priests and monks who do not seem to have been so insecure, but rather acted on a sense of vocation stemming from their spiritual lives. Those who aspire to social status have a lot to learn ?

* The “Privacy” of Ritual: In a traditional Latin Mass, the priest faces away from the congregation (ad orientem), and the liturgy is fixed and unchanging. There is less “personal” interaction or focus on the individual’s private life compared to a modern, “low-church” evangelical setting where there is often a high pressure for personal testimony and social scrutiny.

This observation must surely refer to different kinds of personality between extroverts and introverts. Personally, I abhor parties and small talk. Life for me is richer in small groups of friends and time spent alone for prayer and study. Not being attracted to Evangelical praise services or modern liturgies has nothing to do with sexual questions.

* Transcendence: The focus is on the “Mystery of God” rather than the “Community of Man.” For someone who feels like an outsider in society, a liturgy that ignores the modern world entirely can be a profound relief.

Again, this has nothing to do with homosexuality but a spiritual and mystical notion of Christianity that I share.

As for the opposition between Anglo-Catholicism with its openness and the rigidity of Roman Catholic traditionalism, I understand the question about who is “included”. It depends on individual parishes. I wish they would not be LGBTQ+ inclusive as an ideology but rather respect people who respect the majority, a question of doing to others as you would have them do to you. Roman Catholic traditionalists can be very inquisitorial in regard to unmarried laymen!

Oscar Wilde was above all a Romantic in his thinking and understanding of individual freedom. He was a victim of his own imprudence by suing the Marquis of Queensberry for the nasty visiting card. His In Carceris et Vinculis written during his imprisonment is a particularly moving piece of writing, expressing his suffering. Of course, he was attracted to Catholicism by beauty as well as truth and goodness.

Myself, music was my evangelist, not some Bible-bashing fanatic !

I see no justification for “queering” the story of John Henry Newman. If he had sexual relations with his friends, let the accuser produce proof ! So it goes on and on in the same dreary way. All this stuff makes me want to continue to take refuge from this noisy and violent modern world. The piece by Mendelssohn inspired by Psalm 55 comes to mind.

Hear my prayer, O God, incline Thine ear!
Thyself from my petition do not hide.
Take heed to me! Hear how in prayer I mourn to Thee,
Without Thee all is dark, I have no guide.

The enemy shouteth, the godless come fast!
Iniquity, hatred, upon me they cast!
The wicked oppress me, Ah where shall I fly?
Perplexed and bewildered, O God, hear my cry!

My heart is sorely pained within my breast,
my soul with deathly terror is oppressed,
trembling and fearfulness upon me fall,
with horror overwhelmed, Lord, hear me call!

O for the wings, for the wings of a dove!
Far away, far away would I rove!
In the wilderness build me a nest,
and remain there for ever at rest.

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In the Midst of our Confusion and Anxiety

Posted on Tuesday, 9 December, 2025 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have already introduced a couple of posts with the title of an encyclical that Pius XI had written in German in 1937, a translation of the title being “It is with deep anxiety and growing surprise…” in reaction to the growing evil in Germany and the coming war that was only two to three years away for most of Europe. Today, we are worried about the increasing bureaucratic overreach of the European Union and the World Economic Forum. They increasingly represent a kind of abstract intellectualism that cares nothing for real human needs in persons and local communities.

I am habitually silent about politics because I am as much a victim of propaganda and lies as anyone else. It is by this means that the Archons control us and cancel out any resistance. Their intention is the same as any dictatorship like that of Hitler, Stalin, Mao,  Mussolini and many others. Human persons and imagination must be obliterated in the interest of the collective, whether it be a nation or something like what the EU is becoming. A few years ago, I opposed the British government’s decision to separate from the EU in the name of many ideals we cherish in our Islands, but time has proven that the increasing socialist collectivism walks in lockstep with Brussels, even before the election of Starmer. I approach this issue, not from the point of view of someone’s angry ideology and emotional protest, but from the origins of European idealism in the advent of the Romantic movement in the 1790’s. We all know what happened in France in those years – an earlier form of the murderous ideology that keeps rearing its hideous head.

Continue reading →

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The Voice of God

Posted on Thursday, 20 November, 2025 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

The voice of God is music – harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, form, inspiration – a whole language that words alone cannot convey. Music can be an instrument of revelation, or one of control and evil. I write this little piece with J.S. Bach’s Kunst die Fugue played by Lionel Rogg on the modern baroque organ of Geneva Cathedral. This work was left unfinished at the point where three fugue subjects converged into a climax, and then fizzled out. Lionel Rogg plays the fugue a second time, but with his own composition in a conjecture of what the Master might have written. There is a story going round that two pieces of Bach have just been found in Leipzig. If they are authentic, I hope and pray they will be published so that I can buy a copy.

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The Simple Priest

Posted on Monday, 17 November, 2025 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

It is now a very long time since I was a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church, and I was finally away from that situation in late 1997 after my stay at Triors Abbey. I wandered into the sedevacantist vagante scene and that turned out to be an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Between conservative Roman Catholicism and sedevacantism, it sufficed to return to Anglican ecclesiology which concords with the old Dutch Old Catholic view. I was also reinforced in my intuition by contrasting the rural parish against the bureaucracy of the elites – exactly like in modern politics.

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Sarum Kalendar 2025-2026

Posted on Wednesday, 22 October, 2025 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have just published the Sarum Kalendar for 2025 to 2026. The pdf has not reproduced the versicle and response symbols. Download the doc version if you have Microsoft Office on your computer.

Click to access Sarum%20Ordo%202025-2026-small.pdf

https://civitas-dei.eu/Sarum%20Ordo%202025-2026-small.doc

Please inform me of any errors and I can correct them before the first Sunday of Advent arrives.

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Schism in the Name of Tradition

Posted on Sunday, 5 October, 2025 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have been particularly struck by two YouTube videos, one by Jean-Dominique Michel who is a Swiss anthropologist and expert in mental health, specialising in depression and addictions, and speaking on the sovereign importance of spirituality. However, it is not the subject of this essay. The second is this :

The Russian Old Believers

Continue reading →

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The Philosopher King

Posted on Friday, 19 September, 2025 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I am so disenchanted with modern left / right political disputes and even the idea that English and European culture can be saved by reversing the policies of mass immigration, especially of Muslims. I am not going to discuss the question, but I am aware that some are accusing King Charles III of having converted to Islam and promoted a conspiracy to destroy western culture and civilisation in favour of the richest oligarchs of this planet.

I have been shaken by the lack of culture and religion of many of our contemporaries that I wonder if it might not teach them a lesson to find themselves under a regime like Iraq with the Ayatollah or Afghanistan under the Taliban ! No, I would not seriously entertain such an idea, but divine truth and love are found beyond the exoteric religion of institutional churches, synagogues, mosques, temples or whatever. Exoteric religion is vital because we are incarnate, but we need to search for our inner and immanent divinity which is at the same time transcendent. This is not syncretism or “New Age” but a concern that political religion alone will not solve the problems in the modern world.

King Charles III is often been accused of supporting “woke” and left-wing agendas like the environment and being involved in the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. In 1994, he suggested that when he became King, he would use the title of Defender of Faiths rather than Defender of the Faith. He was open to other faiths, especially Islam, and this caused many to accuse him of promoting secularism or syncretism, renouncing the claim of Christianity to be the one true faith. The truth is not so simple.

Charles may well be our modern-day philosopher king in the Platonic meaning of this idea. He has supported the school of thought called Perennialism holding a universal truth which is more or less present in all traditional religions. His Majesty is the patron of the Temenos Academy, dedicated to studying Perennialism. How about the idea that he not trying to secularise and destroy spiritual tradition, but to give it new life ?

I am sensitive to this subject, because I discovered a different dimension of Christianity when I was at university in Switzerland. I participated in a church history seminar on Liberalism in which the name of Félicité de Lamennais was emphasised, a view of religion and the secular state that was condemned by Gregory XVI in his encyclical Mirari Vos of 1832. Like Modernism in the 1890’s and 1900’s, the word came to describe a very wide and imprecise worldview, notably promoting ideas like the separation of Church and State and a more open theological view than Thomism. My acquiring and reading Bernard Reardon’s Religion in the Age of Romanticism (Cambridge 1985) opened a completely new view of what Catholicism meant to me. I discovered German Idealism as an alternative view of epistemology and truth as a transcendent to which the soul yearns rather than pretends to possess. Many years later, I discovered Novalis, the young man who died of TB in 1801 having lived in the Saxony part of what is now Germany. In the early 1990’s when I was still a seminarian at Gricigliano, I was introduced to an amazing man living in Paris. His name was Jean Phaure. He had been born in French Vietnam. He wrote the book Le Cycle de l’Humanité Adamique, introduction à l’étude de la cyclologie traditionnelle et de la fin du temps. He wrote many other books too. It was a great privilege to meet him and to be invited to eat Vietnamese meals as he revealed to me a whole new world. When I discovered Novalis, this pen name rang with me – we walk new paths in fidelity to the great Tradition. My love of Romanticism suddenly converged with my discovery of Perennial Traditionalism, something much deeper than simple conservatism of nineteenth and early twentieth century authoritarian Catholicism. Another author who entered my world was René Guénon.

He with Frithjof Schuon and Ananda Coomaraswamy introduced a whole new volume to the history of Romanticism reacting against materialism and the extreme rationalism of the eighteenth century. To this day, I have Guénon’s La Crise du Monde Moderne, Le Règne de la Quantité et les signes des temps (just cast your mind to Berdyaev’s The End of our Time). There is also Orient et Occident, a theme described by Vladimir Soloviev that touched the young Fribourg student to the core. I have been wary of Guénon because of his conversion to Islam, even though it was the spiritual and mystical “branch”. However, I believe that our being able to relate to Christianity can be enhanced by exposure to Sufism and Hinduism in their most subtle expressions.

Charles has expressed particular sympathy with Perennial Traditionalism. He has himself mentioned the concept of the Reign of Quantity, lamenting a world that no longer years for God. I too have been brought to a love of the sea and a concern about the amount of plastic trash finding its way there. Like Berdyaev, Guénon spoke of art and creativity as a vehicle of transcendence. Everything is converging. The Romantics loved nature and it was a part of our human inspiration. As Wordsworth wrote during his days in the Lake District, where I spent my childhood climbing the fells with my family and our inexhaustible dogs :

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Guénon brought King Charles closer to mystical Islam, where I still feel fear and recoiling. There are aspects of Islam that are forgotten in Christianity. The Quran was heavily influenced by Syrian Christianity and the polemics over Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite Christology that tormented Christianity in these centuries. Charles believes it possible and desirable to find light in the traditions of other religions, because the same universal truth resides in them all. Would Charles like to see all religions merge together as in the view of syncretism ? His conservative critics would see a desire for a one world religion in the hands of a real-life Blofeld and SPECTRE ! This theme has emerged in the writings of dystopian novelists.

However, Perennialists, like the Romantics and Idealists before them, were highly critical of syncretism. Guénon was just as sharply critical of New Age, Theosophy and the other various groups from the late nineteenth century. I think that we can be assured that our King has no idea of rejecting Christianity and replacing it with Islam. He manifestly desires to enrich Christianity and bring life back to it after centuries of moralism, institutional hypocrisy and authoritarian overreach.

Perennialism has the ability to recognise truth, beauty and goodness in the various faiths present in Britain – at the same time as maintaining absolute truth. Others might go down the “woke” rabbit hole of inclusivity, he avoids relativism and any temptation to abandon the sacred. He might well save pre-modernity and tradition. Reading various articles and ideas about King Charles in this light of Perennialism, I am left with optimism for the future and faith in the spiritual nature of the Monarchy.

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Returning to Writing

Posted on Thursday, 4 September, 2025 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

It is a long time since I last wrote on my blog. Perhaps it is a case of writer’s block or any one of those spiritual / psychological conditions that cause us to lose interest in things as our world becomes increasingly uncertain. We are subjected to a barrage of propaganda, essentially dualist in the extreme. I am not the only one to have noticed the same degree of popular discontent and politicians seemingly not caring or even in league with some kind of political and financial elite. I approach the whole situation as a sceptic. Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction can indicate one contrary proposition as being true and the other false, or both being false.

I write this from the cabin of my little boat Novalis, still on her trailer and waiting for high tide to be launched here at La Rochelle. The weather is still unpleasant, but should improve this weekend before a new Atlantic depression next week. Our little flotilla of the Dinghy Cruising Association will certainly shelter in a port on the Ile de Ré when it strikes with heavy wind and rain.

Reading books when we have become used to electronic screens takes self-discipline. I have adopted the way of reading a light novel and a serious book, presently Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy. This work seems to stick with Christianity and avoid some of the excesses of René Guénon and others of the early twentieth century. I am reminded of the calm prayerful and academic approach of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin contrasted with the noisy initiatic rituals of some groups named after him. I come up with nothing new given what I have written in the past, and which you can find on this blog.

It takes a lot of effort to avoid getting caught up in the “fear porn” of the media. If someone wants to control us, the most effective way to do it is through fear. A Christian does not fear his own death.

Man that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow.

I retired this year from my translating business. I would have preferred to continue for another year, but I was getting no more work from my client agents. I have noticed the increasing quality of AI translation and that I was making fewer and fewer corrections to produce a “human quality” translation. So, I am now a pensioner. That word rings in association with the idea of having become a “useless” human being, worthy only of death to conserve resources for the young and healthy. Fortunately, most people judge humanity from its respect for its senior citizens and the dead.

I need to write, since it is the only way I can exercise a priestly ministry. The institutional Church I belong to is completely irrelevant in the country in which I live. France, the UK, many other countries are consumed with boredom and nihilism. I wrote about Georges Bernanos some time ago in Georges Bernanos and Boredom. People who get bored are usually of the personality profile that seeks to nourish its ego from the energy of others, rather than seek the Transcendent and Immanent God within. It is what I see with many of the “patriots” who target an alien culture seeking to replace them. What is being replaced ? This is one of the most important questions we have to ask ourselves. If we fail to get to what is most interior and rich in meaning, the rest, the exterior, will become more and more irrelevant. This is the drama of modern Christianity. If we try to “make it relevant”, it’s irrelevance will become more and more boring.

Our western culture seems to succumb to thuggery and organised crime, both from abroad and our own countries. Evil comes from within, as we are manipulated by demons, archons and narcissistic humans. It also comes from within ourselves in the form of aggression, fear – – and boredom.

I hope and pray that each of my readers will work out his own way back to God, truth, beauty, goodness, music, nobility of spirit.

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Habemus Papam – 2005

Posted on Monday, 12 May, 2025 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I republish some blog postings I wrote about the election of Benedict XVI in 2005, now twenty years ago. I had not yet joined the Traditional Anglican Communion and I was quite disenchanted by the various options around me. I had spent a few days with an independent priest by the name of Bernard Duvert and the idea of joining an oriental church was studied. With me without any experience of the oriental rites! I was in a state of suspense, and I tried to see signs of hope and optimism. One such was Pope Benedict XVI.

Twenty years of history have unrolled between my reflections and these early days of Pope Leo XIV. We hope and try to see the bright side. Hope is a virtue with faith and charity.

5th April 2005 – Sede Vacante Continue reading →

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