Sub Tuum Praesidium

We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God; Despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.

Why a Guild?



One definition of a guild reads:
  • an association of people for mutual aid or the pursuit of a common goal.
The Newman Rosary Guild aims to unite people of common interest—i.e., the praying of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary—to assist them to better dispose themselves to the will of God. We humbly ask the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, to obtain for us from her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the grace to sustain our growth in holiness.

The Guild is a movement to educate and inform Catholics, to invite all Catholics to pray well and often for those in most need of God's mercy. Keeping in mind personal sanctification, those motivated by this Guild will promote the reverent recitation of the Rosary as a sure way for people to embrace the wisdom conveyed by Saint Francis: “Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.” Our families, communities, cities and nations desperately need what God alone can offer us, first through His sacraments, and through the Rosary, to draw others to salvation in Christ.

Why name the Guild after Newman?

Saint John Henry Newman is a significant influence among Ordinariate Catholics. Possibly the greatest theological mind since St. Thomas Aquinas, Newman's thought anticipated in many ways the Second Vatican Council. A convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, Newman's conversion prefigured the movement of contemporary Anglicans to Rome. His movement to Rome models the path all sincere seekers can take to heal the wounds of division among Christians. Bearing in mind Newman's example of unity-oriented conversion, we in the Ordinariate, are "(c)alled to be gracious instruments of Christian unity." — from the official website of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter: https://ordinariate.net/about.

That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.—The Holy Gospel according to Saint John 17:21.

Pope Saint John Paul II reminds us in his great exhortation to unity in the truth, Ut Unum Sint, that we "must profess together the same truth about the Cross."

Christ calls all his disciples to unity. My earnest desire is to renew this call today, to propose it once more with determination, repeating what I said at the Roman Colosseum on Good Friday 1994, at the end of the meditation on the Via Crucis prepared by my Venerable Brother Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. There I stated that believers in Christ, united in following in the footsteps of the martyrs, cannot remain divided. If they wish truly and effectively to oppose the world's tendency to reduce to powerlessness the Mystery of Redemption, they must profess together the same truth about the Cross.

We are reminded of the centrality of the Cross every time we begin the prayer of the Apostles' Creed on the cross attached to the Rosary.
All are encouraged to:
  • maintain a commitment to regularly pray for: one's community/parish; one's pastor and priests; one's bishop or ordinary; for one's family; and for those in most need of God's mercy.
  • promote a weekly communal recitation of the Rosary (5 decades; one set of mysteries) in one's community, if possible, before Mass.
  • form home prayer groups that meet regularly at an agreed upon time to pray for the needs of the Church.
  • seek the intercession of Mary under her title Our Lady of Walsingham by praying the following prayer during the Rosary: Our Lady of Walsingham, plead with thy Son for our parish, its priests and people. Guard us beneath thy protecting veil from sin and sorrow; be our shield against pride and envy, and all the snares of the devil; and teach us, loving thee, to love the Lord Jesus and all souls for His sake. Amen.
V. Our Lady of Walsingham:
R. Pray for us.
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A Brief History of Guilds

Guilds—from an article at New Advent

Guilds were voluntary associations for religious, social, and commercial purposes. These associations, which attained their highest development among the Teutonic nations, especially the English, during the Middle Ages, were of four kinds:
  • religious guilds;
  • frith guilds;
  • merchant guilds; and
  • craft guilds.
The word itself, less commonly, but more correctly, written gild, was derived from the Anglo-Saxon gildan meaning "to pay", whence came the noun gegilda, "the subscribing member of a guild". In its origin the word guild is found in the sense of "idol" and also of "sacrifice", which has led some writers to connect the origin of the guilds with the sacrificial assemblies and banquets of the heathen Germanic tribes. Brentano, the first to investigate the question thoroughly, associating these facts with the importance of family relationship among Teutonic nations, considers that the guild in its earliest form was developed from the family, and that the spirit of association, being congenial to Christianity, was so fostered by the Church that the institution and development of the guilds progressed rapidly. [...]

In England

The earliest traces of guilds in England are found in the laws of Ina in the seventh century. These guilds were formed for religious and social purposes and were voluntary in character. Subsequent enactments down to the time of Athelstan (925-940) show that they soon developed into frith guilds or peace guilds, associations with a corporate responsibility for the good conduct of their members and their mutual liability. Very frequently, as in the case of London in early times, the guild law came to be the law of the town. The main objects of these guilds was the preservation of peace, right, and liberty. Religious observances also formed an important part of guild-life, and the members assisted one another both in spiritual and temporal necessities. The oldest extant charter of a guild dates from the reign of Canute, and from this we learn that a certain Orcy presented a guild-hall (gegyld-halle) to the gyldschipe of Abbotsbury in Dorset, and that the members were associated in almsgiving, care of the sick, burial of the dead, and in providing Masses for the souls of deceased members. The social side of the guild is shown in the annual feast for which provision is made. In the "Dooms of London" we find the same religious and social practices described, with the addition of certain advantageous commercial arrangements, such as the establishment of a kind of insurance-fund against losses, and the furnishing of assistance in the capture of thieves. These provisions, however, are characteristic rather of the merchant guilds which grew up during the latter half of the eleventh century.