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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 24, 2010 10:23:43 GMT
This may sound weird, but I was just researching William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw, on Wikipedia out of curiosity en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Joyce I quote this excerpt: The reference comes from AN Wilson's 'After the Victorians'. There are many controversies here, so I will not focus on the personality of Joyce, but rather on the fact a traditional requiem was celebrated in Co Galway (could be Galway, Tuam or Clonfert Diocese) in 1976. Of course, Wilson may have gotten the reference wrong - however, he does strike me as a thorough researcher who tends to know what he is talking about.
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Post by hibernicus on May 24, 2010 10:54:55 GMT
Wilson is notoriously reckless and careless with details, but in fact he is correct in this instance - a Tridentine mass was celebrated at his reburial, I believe at the behest of his elder daughter (who has done a lot to work with Jewish groups to atone for her father's antisemitism). It is mentioned in the standard biographies of Joyce (including Mary Kenny's). This IMHO is slightly dodgy canonically; Joyce rejected Catholicism in his teens and explicitly chose the ministrations of an Anglican clergyman while awaiting execution, so he should have received an Anglican funeral. (I am not saying this to blame him on the C of E - quite a few of his crank British Nazi pals were Catholics, I'm sorry to say.) I am not sure if the TLM was said in Galway or in London; I think the former but I may be wrong. Perhaps the relevant bishop was influenced by the thought that if the reburial had been in England & Wales a TLM could have been celebrated under the indult there. It is unlikely that it was said by the SSPX or any splinter group.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 24, 2010 11:45:18 GMT
Thanks for the clarification, Hibernicus. I agree with you absolutely that allowing any Mass for William Joyce raises problems (more due to his definitive assertion of Protestantism at the time of death than his public support of Nazism - one allows for possible repentance), but that was not the point I wanted to make.
The point I wanted to make is that a traditional Requiem Mass was said publicly in a parish in Co Galway in 1976, almost mid way between the suppression of the traditional Mass and the indult of 1984. Maybe the reasoning used - that such a Mass would have been permitted in London - was as you said, but it makes an interesting precedent.
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Post by hibernicus on May 25, 2010 13:42:01 GMT
To make it clear, I take it that the objection to celebrating mass in this context does not involve claims about Joyce's salvation or otherwise but to his own wishes and religious identification. I take it there is no objection to Masses for the repose of the soul of non-catholics per se, except where this would involve scandal and/or be misused for political purposes. (Archbishop McQuaid's intervention in 1945 to prevent the celebration of Mass for the repose of the soul of Adolf Hitler would come under this.)
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Aug 20, 2010 19:59:01 GMT
The Bohermore Cemetery is near Galway City and in the Galway diocese. But 1976 was the year that Bishop Browne stepped down and Bishop Casey was transferred from Kerry to Galway.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Aug 20, 2010 20:01:09 GMT
The only way to ascertain whether this happened in Galway is to consult the local papers at the time, which surely covered the event.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 1, 2010 11:40:47 GMT
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