Priestly Ordinations 2017 : 2

Each year, the Saint Bede Studio has the privilege of preparing sacred vestments for priestly Ordinands. Happily, this year has been no exception.

In this post, we are pleased to draw attention to the ordination of Father Bradley Jantz of the Diocese of Birmingham (Alabama USA).  Father Jantz was ordained to the Sacred Priesthood in Saint Paul's Cathedral, Birmingham (USA) on 24th June by the Most Rev'd Robert Baker.

Father Jantz commissioned a set of vestments from the Studio in the Gothic Revival style.

The vestments were made from an English brocade in a lovely shade of ivory and ornamented with a braid of red, blue and gold, especially designed and made for the Saint Bede Studio.  The vestments were lined in red taffeta.

Please pray for Father Jantz and for all newly-ordained priests.

The Cathedral of Saint Paul, Birmingham USA.
Image: www.architectureworks.com

Restoration of a Landmark Sydney Church : 1

Tower and northern transept
of Saint Thomas' church, Lewisham NSW.

Earlier this year, the Saint Bede Studio was approached to be a consultant on the restoration of the interior of a famous church in Sydney NSW.

The church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury (also known as Saint Thomas Becket's) was founded in 1887 in the Sydney suburb of Lewisham. Because of its proximity to the railway line which runs into the centre of Sydney from the North, the splendid Gothic Revival tower of the church is seen by thousands of people each day as they pass by in the city's trains.

This is the first in a series of posts about the restoration of S' Thomas', to which the Saint Bede Studio has been pleased to contribute.

Father Adrian Fortescue and the 18th Century

Father Adrian Fortescue

"In the eighteenth century a desolating wave of bad taste passed over Europe.  It gave us Baroc churches, tawdry gilding, vulgarities of gaudy ornament instead of fine construction.  It passed over clothes and gave us our mean, tight modern garments.  And it passed, alas! over vestments too, and gave us skimped, flat vestments of bad colour, outlined in that most impossible material, gold braid, instead of the ample, stately forms which had lasted until then....For these curtailed shapes are not the historic ones which came down hardly modified for so many centuries. They are a quite modern example of Baroc taste...Skimped chasubles, gold braid and lace are not Roman; they are eighteenth century bad taste."

So wrote one of the most illustrious ecclesiastical scholars of the early twentieth century, the Rev'd Dr Adrian Fortescue. This is an extract from a lecture which he gave to the Altar Society of Westminster Cathedral in 1912. Dr Fortescue's name is better known for the ceremonial manual which he prepared in order to raise money for the building of his Parish church: The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, which has run into many editions, over almost one century.