The Latin Mass Society was founded in 1965 and has had an enthusiastic membership ever since. Members I've met tend to have a thought-out position - it isn't something people join because of a knee-jerk reaction or nostalgia. I think I am right in saying Forest was a member. (It had a minor schism in 1969 between those who wanted to champion the old mass and those who were content to argue for the new rite done as conservatively as possible (ie there's nothing to say the new mass can't be in Latin, priest and people facing same way, gregorian chant, even the silent canon), the latter group, the Association for Latin Liturgy, still exists in theory but is pretty moribund (but arguably that view has become an established element of the mainstream). In 1971 Paul VI granted permission for the old rite to be used by those who wished in England (so the LMS was able to remain inside the church and was able to keep its distance from the Lefebvrites.) - the permission was known as the Agatha Christie Indult because it was obtained on the back of a petition signed by many of the great and good outside the church as well as inside, including two Anglican bishops as well as Christie - legend has it that it was Christie's signature that swung it because Paul VI was a massive fan. Nevertheless, for a long time old-mass devotees were regarded with enormous scepticism by the English hierarchy. Hume had sympathy for them but he left keeping the troops in line to Derek Warlock, who was very definitely of the modern persuasion.
All of this came to a bit of a head in 1`975, the year before Attic Term was published, with the affair of Father Oswald Baker and the mass at Downham Market, which briefly hit the headlines. Briefly, Baker had cheerfully refused throughout to say the new mass. Increasing pressure was brought to bear on him and yet he persisted and became more and more popular (it probably helped that a Telegraph journalist was a regular and wrote about it from time to time). People travelled from all over the country to go to mass there. His very last mass in the parish church before the bishop acted to chuck him out was recorded and released as an album to raise funds - my father had a copy and I am willing to bet Forest did too. Curiously the bishop never chucked Baker out of the presbytery, the replacement priest had to rent a flat. Funds were raised and Baker set up shop in a converted building down the road (he went progressively off the reservation over the following years, to the extent that he thought Archbishop Lefebvre was overly-liberal, and ended up a sedevacantist. Mel Gibson and his father became supporters and visited). The whole affair seems to me a significant bit of context to the Catholic elements in Attic Term.
One final note - as well as the Attic Term 1976 saw the publication of Michael Davies "Cranmer's Godly Order". Davies, a Welsh grammar school teacher and a convert from the Baptists, was a major figure in the trad community and his book, polemical though it is, is a solid bit of work, properly argued and researched and well-written, and it sold very well - a revised edition was republished a few years ago. The thesis of the book and later volumes by Davies is precisely that advanced by Patrick - that the mass of 1970 has had everything done to it that Cranmer did at the reformation. I have not been able to find out whether Davies' book came out first, but in any event I would not be at all surprised to learn that his arguments were already circulating around the trad community in the form of talks and articles and that Forest was well aware of them.
RE: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?
The Latin Mass Society was founded in 1965 and has had an enthusiastic membership ever since. Members I've met tend to have a thought-out position - it isn't something people join because of a knee-jerk reaction or nostalgia. I think I am right in saying Forest was a member. (It had a minor schism in 1969 between those who wanted to champion the old mass and those who were content to argue for the new rite done as conservatively as possible (ie there's nothing to say the new mass can't be in Latin, priest and people facing same way, gregorian chant, even the silent canon), the latter group, the Association for Latin Liturgy, still exists in theory but is pretty moribund (but arguably that view has become an established element of the mainstream). In 1971 Paul VI granted permission for the old rite to be used by those who wished in England (so the LMS was able to remain inside the church and was able to keep its distance from the Lefebvrites.) - the permission was known as the Agatha Christie Indult because it was obtained on the back of a petition signed by many of the great and good outside the church as well as inside, including two Anglican bishops as well as Christie - legend has it that it was Christie's signature that swung it because Paul VI was a massive fan. Nevertheless, for a long time old-mass devotees were regarded with enormous scepticism by the English hierarchy. Hume had sympathy for them but he left keeping the troops in line to Derek Warlock, who was very definitely of the modern persuasion.
All of this came to a bit of a head in 1`975, the year before Attic Term was published, with the affair of Father Oswald Baker and the mass at Downham Market, which briefly hit the headlines. Briefly, Baker had cheerfully refused throughout to say the new mass. Increasing pressure was brought to bear on him and yet he persisted and became more and more popular (it probably helped that a Telegraph journalist was a regular and wrote about it from time to time). People travelled from all over the country to go to mass there. His very last mass in the parish church before the bishop acted to chuck him out was recorded and released as an album to raise funds - my father had a copy and I am willing to bet Forest did too. Curiously the bishop never chucked Baker out of the presbytery, the replacement priest had to rent a flat. Funds were raised and Baker set up shop in a converted building down the road (he went progressively off the reservation over the following years, to the extent that he thought Archbishop Lefebvre was overly-liberal, and ended up a sedevacantist. Mel Gibson and his father became supporters and visited). The whole affair seems to me a significant bit of context to the Catholic elements in Attic Term.
One final note - as well as the Attic Term 1976 saw the publication of Michael Davies "Cranmer's Godly Order". Davies, a Welsh grammar school teacher and a convert from the Baptists, was a major figure in the trad community and his book, polemical though it is, is a solid bit of work, properly argued and researched and well-written, and it sold very well - a revised edition was republished a few years ago. The thesis of the book and later volumes by Davies is precisely that advanced by Patrick - that the mass of 1970 has had everything done to it that Cranmer did at the reformation. I have not been able to find out whether Davies' book came out first, but in any event I would not be at all surprised to learn that his arguments were already circulating around the trad community in the form of talks and articles and that Forest was well aware of them.