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Dear friend - and veritable Maronite Catholic (man am I jealous) - if you do nothing else, as a Maronite attending the Latin liturgy, KNOW the regulations and your rights as a catholic! Take a few moments to read the information at this link and then bookmark it for futrue reference. It is precisely these abuses that drove me from my (now former) NO parish and into the welcoming embrace of my Abouna and his small parish. May God richly reward and bless this man for all the orthodoxy he insists on preaching!

Is Your Mass Valid? Liturgical Abuse

Rod Dreher, former columnist for The New York Post and now with The Dallas Morning News will be returning to Brooklyn this weekend for his annual vacation. On 9/11, Rod was at his desk in NYC but meanwhile, in Brooklyn .....

"Monsignor Ignace Sadek, the elderly pastor of the Maronite cathedral near the Brooklyn waterfront, went to the promenade park overlooking lower Manhattan and prayed for absolution for the dying as the towers burned. When the first building crumbled, and the terrible cloud of smoke, debris, and incinerated human remains began its grim march across the harbor, Monsignor Sadek remained at his post praying. The falling ash turned him into a ghost. Still, he stayed as long as he could. This is a man who came through the civil war in Lebanon, and he doesn’t run.

"People could see I was a priest," he told me later (he is my pastor). "They ran to me and knelt at my feet, and begged for absolution." Think of that: The people of this proud, defiantly secular city, driven to their knees in prayer, begging for mercy in a hot, gray fog. That is what purgatory must be like."
Reflections on September 11, 2001

Rod emailed me the other day, saying how much he looked forward to once again hearing the Qadeeshat chanted in the Cathedral. He named his 2nd son after Monsignor Ignace Sadek.

You can't begin to imagine how truly blessed you are to come from this proud and devout heritage.

You are absolutely right to listen to your "gut". According to Canon Law, EVERY catholic is entitled to a valid liturgy.