Posted on 05/26/2002 7:05:39 PM PDT by ELS
| Jersey City There was a time in the Roman Catholic Church, a generation ago, when codified rituals and whispered prayers embraced the mysterious power of God. In more recent days, the whispers have been of a more profane nature as Catholics from the occasional congregant to the Pope have wrestled with the painful issue of priests who sexually abuse children. The ensuing scandal - which is roiling the American Catholic Church as nothing else in its history - has prompted many to call for liberal reform in the church. Yet odd as it may seem on the surface, there is another group of people within the church who are intent on reform of a very different nature, and they recently gathered in Jersey City to participate in a Mass that once united Catholics across the globe. Traditionalists, as they call themselves, are seeking not less but more orthodoxy in issues of morality and adherence to church doctrine, and are passionate about a liturgy that all but disappeared after the Second Vatican Council. "The old Latin Mass" said Judith Markenstein, whose husband is a deacon at Holy Rosary Parish here, "gives you a mystical sense of the greatness of God and the smallness of us." The Tridentine Mass fell by the wayside in the 1960's when the Vatican updated the liturgy - abandoning Latin in favor of the vernacular, encouraging more lay involvement on the altar and turning the priest around to face the congregation. In 1984 Pope John Paul II allowed the Tridentine Mass to be celebrated, but only under strict conditions. Then in 1988 he issued Ecclesia Dei, which allowed the old rite as long as local bishops gave their permission. Since then, Tridentine Masses have been increasing steadily, if not flourishing. According to the Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, an Illinois-based organization that provides help to parishes interested in starting up a Tridentine Mass, 150 traditional Masses are celebrated each Sunday in the United States and dozens more once or twice a month, up from 60 a week and 40 a month in 1991. As recently as a week ago, a spokeswoman for the coalition said, 117 of the 201 Catholic dioceses in the United States offered a traditional Latin Mass. One week ago, the Newark Archdiocese became No. 118. The first Tridentine Mass at Holy Rosary Parish in more than 30 years attracted about 100 people from all over North Jersey. What drew them, many said, was the old rite's sense of transcendence and mystery, contemplative silence mixed with the unison voices of Gregorian chant, the pungent smell of incense and the sprinkling of holy water. For Ron Colombo, a Hoboken resident, May 19 was a long time coming. Since moving from New York City in 1999, he and his wife, Kim, had traveled 40 minutes each way on Sundays to attend a Tridentine Mass, either back to Manhattan or to Pequannock. When Mr. Colombo heard last summer that the Rev. Kenneth Baker was mulling over the possibility of bringing Latin back to Holy Rosary, he helped the church's pastor, Msgr. Joseph Chiang, to circulate a petition, which eventually made its way to the desk of Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, whose jurisdiction includes Jersey City. Nine months later, with the archbishop's permission in hand, new vestments hanging in the sacristy and Latin-English missals, purchased in part with money donated by the Colombos, his legwork came to fruition. The 30-year-old Mr. Colombo grew up in Queens, a "typical American Catholic," he said. He attended catechism classes, where he learned to "color, share and be nice to people," but little about Catholic dogma, and dutifully attended the post-Vatican II Mass. In 1997, as a law student at New York University, he stumbled by chance upon a Tridentine Mass. "I could not believe this was my religion," he said. "For all practical purposes, it wasn't." Crediting the old rite with making him a "true Catholic," he possesses something like the zeal of a convert, pressing to recapture "traditional Catholic culture." Being a traditionalist, he said, "is not just Mass. It's a mind-set. It's orthodoxy plus culture, an entire milieu of Catholic living." That milieu includes shunning meat on Fridays even though the church prescribes abstinence only during Lent, praying the rosary and saying grace before every meal. Robert Phillips, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut at Hartford, said that traditionalists feel that as Catholic liturgy has gone downhill, so have the moral standards of American Catholics, both laity and clergy. "True devotees of the Old Mass are super-orthodox," said Professor Phillips, who places himself in the traditionalist camp, but does not advocate a full-fledged restoration of the Tridentine Rite. Traditionalists "go against many aspects of American Catholicism," he said. As Kevin Flynn, the 40-year-old master of ceremonies at Holy Rosary's first Mass, put it, "I hope an attachment to the Old Mass also means an attachment to a traditional interpretation of Catholicism. Mass should be the center of your life." Mr. Flynn, like Mr. Colombo, is uncomfortable with the dilution of the solemnity of the Mass over the past 30 years or so, and feels that it has been overshadowed by debates on church positions like abortion and contraception, which he does not believe are open for discussion. In the newer Mass, Mr. Flynn and others said, the crucial sense of the sacred, the idea that something central to the faith takes place on the altar, has given way to a more casual approach. The priest facing the congregation "encourages improvisation," said Professor Phillips, relating an anecdote about a priest who interrupted a Mass to inform the congregation that it was his birthday. The New Mass, he said, encourages such ad-libbing because it is celebrated in English, and also because the priest is "looking at the people, and wants to tell them something." But others find fault with blaming the English-language Mass for moral and liturgical laxity. While the Rev. Neil J. Roy, a theology professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, acknowledged that improvisation happened more frequently today, he would like to see more reverence in the newer rite, rather than a return to the old one. Since for most Catholics, Sunday Mass is the first, and often the most constant, component of their faith, traditionalists see the old rite as a first step on the road to a deeper understanding of Catholicism and stricter adherence to its tenets. "If you can get people into church, and say this is what liturgy is supposed to be, this is about worshipping God, and then we can get them into moral law, abortion, homosexuality, contraception," said Mr. Phillips. Mr. Colombo agreed. Asking rhetorically how many Catholics use birth control, he said, " I'd like to see those same numbers at a traditional Latin Mass. If we return to the traditional Latin Mass, you are going to have a change in people." |
Section A: Every-Sunday traditional latin masses:
St. Mary Help of Christians Church
1204 South 61st Street
West Allis, Wisc. 53214-3207
Celebrants: Fr. Richard Breitbach & Fr. Frank Yaniak
Tel.: (414) 390-4283, 645-4773
Sundays: 11.30 a.m. (Low Mass in the summer; otherwise, High Mass)
Holydays: 7.00 p.m.
1st Fridays: 6.30 p.m.
1st Saturdays: 9.00 a.m.
Maundy Thursday & Good Friday: 7.00 p.m.
Holy Saturday: 10.30 p.m.
Thanks for the link . . . now if you could just do something about our Archbishop . . . :(
Ha! Well, you’re in luck. I just now signed up for two hours of “official” adoration. So I’ll be praying! :)
LOL! Thanks — we could use it! ;-)
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I am sympathetic to the argument, but all the monsters who almost devoured the Catholic Church in America were formed in the 1930s-1950s, in the supposed Golden Age.
Yes, the Spellmans and the Cushings opened the door to lots of young gay men, but the typical result was not the mass soul murderers like Birmingham and Goeghan but the lonely, sometimes alcoholic offender with a single victim.
The homosexual crisis in Amchurch was born in the Latin mass days.
“Let me get this straight.
An English Mass fosters sins; the Latin Mass doesn’t?
That’s shoe-size IQ thinking.
“Informality” is a nonsenical notion, especially when one equates it with the Novus Ordo. Who are you to decide the reverence of Catholics?
Latin doesn’t equal holy, pal.”
No, you haven’t gotten it straight.
Now, I have been at beautifully reverent Novus Ordo masses, and we are lucky to have a parish nearby in which that is the norm. However, the norm elsewhere is less reassuring. And the informality is indeed part of the problem.
In the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, “External Actions are signs of Internal Reverence”
Here’s one example: in the Novus Ordo, the Confiteor may be said once, but also may be replaced by a brief “penitential rite”. In our area, this translates into the Confiteor almost never being said.
In the Traditional Latin Rite, the Confiteor is said THREE TIMES, once by the priest, twice by the altar boys, acting as our surrogates. The people say these prayers silently along with the altar boys.
Thus, the Traditional Rite reinforces our self-contemplation of sin and our desire for forgiveness. This self-contemplation makes us more mindful of our shortcomings as we relate to the Almighty.
On the other hand, the Novus Ordo glosses over this important concept in its own “Don’t worry, be happy” way. The Faithful are not constantly guided to self-examine at Mass, leading to less frequent confessions with the attendant grace received, leading to gradual acceptance of the crassness of modern secular life.
It is common to see many people lined up for Confession prior to a Traditional Latin Mass, and not infrequently, the rest of the congregation is saying the Rosary aloud prior to Mass.
If you attend a traditional Latin Mass, you are immediately struck by the quiet, the inherent reverence of the ceremony, and the beauty of the literal translation of the Latin text. And, if you have not heard Gregorian Chant in the setting for which it was written, especially the chanted Communion verses as you contemplate your reception of the Eucharist, you really can’t appreciate the uplifting, often ethereal nature of the traditional rite.
We have lost much in the wake of Vatican II.
The TLM at Holy Rosary Church has just moved around the corner earlier this month to St. Anthony of Padua Church - another beautiful church.
“No offense meant but a mere change of form will not cure what is happening to the Roman church.”
It is much more than just a change of form. The Tridentine Mass has power that is simply lacking in the Nooey Gooey mass, however reverently the latter may be said.
“Apparently the American hierarchy attempted to temporize with homosexuals.”
Beginning in the 1930s, the Soviet Union invested huge amounts of time and treasure in infiltrating commie fags into the seminaries. They had a significant degree of success. Now, that effort is moribund. The Church can’t turn on a dime, but it is coming about.
I am very disappointed that Pope Benedict retired with so little accomplished, and increasingly upset that Pope Francis looks like a full-bore modernist (see Pascendi Dominici Gregis). Still, God wins in the end, and this world is just a device that gives us the chance to become worthy to spend eternity with Him.
“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the Novus Ordo.”
I apologize for confronting, but there most certainly is a great deal wrong with it.
Analogy: if a person needs 400 mgs of tetracycline to cure strep throat, the Nooey Gooey mass is about 4 mgs.
“Yes, the Spellmans and the Cushings opened the door to lots of young gay men”
Use of the euphemism “gay” is participation in mortal sin.
You posted to sinkspur.
Sinkspur was a fraud; a modernist heretic who claimed to be a permanent deacon and was not.
He was supported to the hilt in all disputes by the Moderators, right up to the day he was finally exposed. At that point, the moderators forbade any further mention of sinkspur or their inexcusable support for him.
“It is common to see many people lined up for Confession prior to a Traditional Latin Mass”
The astounding part of that is that it means there is a priest in the church hearing confessions.
These Nooey Gooey churches generally have confession from 1500:00:00 until 1500:00:01 on Saturdays, unless the priest is busy—but of course you can call for an appointment.
When I came back to the states in April 2006 I left such a message more than a week before Easter. The priest called two weeks after Easter.
In Tokyo I could receive absolution every day of the year, either at lunch time or after work.
If you do get absolution by appointment, it’s likely to be in the parish office face to face with the priest.
Your trepidation is understandable. Read the Mass before you go so you will have a feel for what is being done and to see the parts which you already know. Many people don’t try to follow the missal the first time, many just watch and pray and that is fine. Allow yourself to enter into the sacred mysteries and enjoy the experience.
“It is common to see many people lined up for Confession prior to a Traditional Latin Mass”At St. John Cantius in Chicago, Confession continues right on through Sunday Mass. It's absolutely jaw-dropping the number of people who [at times] are in line.. http://www.cantius.org/go/liturgy_devotions/category/liturgical_devotional_schedule/
The TLM I was referring to is around the corner from the original TLM mentioned in the article. In the intervening years a new pastor came in at Holy Rosary Church who was, shall we say, not friendly to tradition. So, after much turmoil, the TLM has been relocated from Holy Rosary to St. Anthony's which is on the same city block. They have Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.
The oratory where I regularly go to Mass offers the TLM daily. It is not around the corner from where I live (or work). Can't have everything ...
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