More on Pope Benedict and the SSPX

I invite all my brothers and sisters in the San Francisco Bay Area, and those visiting, to attend one of the daily Traditional Latin Masses at my parish St. Margaret Mary, Oakland CA, which is offered under an indult by our Bishop Allen Vigneron.

http://www.unavoce.org/news/2005/Bishop%20Vigneron.html

http://www.institute-christ-king.org/oaklandhome.htm

I especially encourage you to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of every month when we are privileged to have the Pacific Collegium sing.

Yes, I got to Our Lady of Peace. However, this Mass was approved by the previous Bishop of San Jose. Bishop McGrath was not even aware of it's existence until after he was bishop for a while. He has not forced the Mass to be discontinued so far. The Mass is at 7:30 PM on one Saturday a month. It's very difficult for many people at that time, especially since many have children. (the Mass tends to be a long one- I can't remember it ending before 9)

He said, one of the big problems is that there aren't that many priests around who remember or ever learned how to preside over the Pre-V2 Mass.

That isn't really a problem at all. Already there are several priests who can say the traditional Mass, and several more only need to brush up. Besides that, the FSSP have said they would be more than happy to provide a priest for the diocese to say Mass at any time. (An FSSP priest drives down from Sacramento once a month for Our Lady of Peace, since the former pastor has become unable to do it.) There is a retired priest in the diocese who goes to Fresno and other areas to say the Mass almost every week. I know priests in the diocese who have asked to the bishop permission to learn the traditional mass, and he has declined. (I guess it was offered in the spirit of obedience, though I don't believe that a priest needs to ask the bishop permission for this.)

Sounds like a typical cop-out answer. Here in Boston, the Tridentine Mass rotation consists of three 76-87 year-old priests who are on "retired" status. But we have another priest, age 44, whom we trained ourselves about five years ago. He wasn't let out of his cage very often to help out for a long while, but, lately he's become a regular, at least for High Mass (I guess the other priests asked for relief, since they are all both tone-deaf and too old to hang in there so long!). We 're hoping we can make a final appeal to have him assigned to us as part of the plan to stave-off the closure we face (they're threatened by our success, and want to close our church at least in part to kill us off with a totally unaccepable new venue). And there is another priest that we have trained and have ready to go, age 30 (!), but the archdiocese has absolutely forbidden him to do the Latin Mass. God forbid that it should succeed and have young, healthy and dedicated priests at the altar assuring a long life to that success!

Anyway, the point here is that it is not that hard to get a younger priest trained to handle both the rubrics and the language of the Tridentine Mass. If an under-40 layman in our parish could get two priests up to speed, I'm sure the resources directly at the hand of a bishop can do better! It's more a matter of the bishop "wanting" to assign someone to the role.

I was born in that neighborhood and baptized in that church!

Were you really?!! Are you still familiar with Troy? After closing 6 or the 7 parishes in Watervliet, Bishop Hubbard has now trained his eye on Troy and closing several beautiful old churches, inlcuding St. Joseph's in South Troy and the parish in which you were baptized.

Are you still familiar with Troy?

Well, we moved out of there around the time of the Army-McCarthy hearings (I can still hear my father yelling at Joe Welch), but I do drop into the city from time to time and my best friend is the webmaster of the tridentine website you linked to, so I try to keep up. I also have priest friends who were involved in the last round of consolidations.

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