Lecture: Resistance to the Second Vatican Council

'Are you in union with your bishop, the bishops of the whole Church and the Pope or are you not?'  The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales posed this question in October 1976 to a small group of Roman Catholics organising 'Mass centres' in their homes or renting village halls for priests of the Saint Pius V Association (SPVA) to celebrate Mass in the Tridentine Rite despite the Church's abandonment of that rite following the Second Vatican Council in 1965.

This lecture traces the history of 'Mass centres' in Britain, from their origins in the work of the travelling priest Peter Morgan in southern England in 1971, their expansion northward in 1974 to their peak popularity from 1975 to 1978.  Also discussed is how Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre amalgamated the SPVA into the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) in 1979, leading to many 'Mass centres' being replaced by bona fide churches for exclusively celebrating the Tridentine Mass before Archbishop Lefebvre was excommunicated in 1988.  Most SSPX churches in Britain today owe their origins to these early 'Mass centres' that represented a grassroots movement of Catholics torn between adhering to the pre-conciliar liturgy and obeying the Pope.