When I was growing up, I knew my grandparents were devout Catholics, but not until I began researching the origins of the traditionalist Catholic movement in England did I realise just how dedicated my grandparents were to opposing the changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council. This project is ongoing and emerges at the convergence of family history, local history and Catholic history research. It follows the life events and writings of Derrick Taylor and Irene Mary Taylor, the paternal grandparents of Cometan, with the aim to understand why this seemingly ordinary Catholic couple from Lancashire, in the early 1970s, joined the radical, conservative traditionalist movement lead by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Father Peter Morgan.
The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) made significant changes to the liturgy and philosophical outlook of the Roman Catholic Church in an attempt to push the Church into the modern age. The Council chose to abandon the Tridentine Rite of the Mass and also did away with older Catholic customs that the Church felt had become peripheral to the global Catholic faith. Many were opposed to these changes and they were called the traditionalists. The grandparents of Brandon Reece Taylorian (Cometan) were two of these traditionalists and they lived at a large house on the outskirts of Leyland on a country lane called Longmeanygate. Their names were Derrick and Irene Mary Taylor. Derrick had built the house at Longmeanygate for his family of ten children. In 1973, the couple met Father Peter Morgan and became enamoured by this charismatic, travelling priest, offering their home to him so that he would come to perform the Latin Mass in their living room and kitchen since the Church had abandoned this rite that they held dearly. This ongoing projects seeks to understand why Irene and Derrick Taylor joined the traditionalist movement and what backlash they received as a result.
