Bring in traditionalists to save dying (UK) parishes, urges bishop

Good idea ping!

He said: “If a bishop has a church that faces closure, this presents a good opportunity to create personal parishes and invite traditionalists to come into his diocese.”

Last I heard, the Archdiocese of Boston has another 40 or so parishes that face closing (not of course counting the 100 or so that have already been closed). What's the betting that Cardinal O'Malley will take full advantage of this wonderful idea? What's that? No takers?

Jeez, NYer -- you could have cleaned up the formatting a little! ;-)

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Bring in traditionalists to save dying parishes, urges bishop

A leading traditionalist bishop has urged the bishops of England and Wales to invite traditionalist groups to take over failing parishes instead of closing down churches.
Bishop Fernando Areas Rifan of Campos, Brazil, said on Monday that the Pope’s recent document Summorum Pontificum, which lifted restrictions on the Traditional Mass, would bring about a worldwide revival in Catholic worship.
He said that in the motu proprio the Pope had encouraged the creation of “personal parishes” – special communities within a diocese that do not serve specific geographical boundaries – for the celebration of traditional Catholic worship.
Bishop Rifan, speaking exclusively to The Catholic Herald just 19 days before Summorum Pontificum comes into effect on September 14, said that the growth of such communities could represent a “new chapter” for the Church.
He said: “If a bishop has a church that faces closure, this presents a good opportunity to create personal parishes and invite traditionalists to come into his diocese.”
“They can establish these parishes and therefore open the door to traditionalists,” he added. “We are all Catholics, after all.”
The bishop’s remarks are expected to delight many British Catholics who are disgruntled with the increasing number of church closures and clustered parishes in England and Wales.
Bishop Rifan, who was in Britain this week for a special conference on the motu proprio in Oxford, said that certain groups, such as the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) and the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICRSS), could help revive flagging parishes. “Perhaps this has not happened before,” he said. “But with the motu proprio we are in a new chapter so it can start now.”
Both the FSSP and the ICRSS have confirmed that if asked by a bishop they would wherever possible send a priest to save a parish.
Bishop Rifan also said that, contrary to the suspicions of many conservative British Catholics, the bishops of England and Wales were “very open” to the Traditional Mass. “When you compare them to other bishops around the world, they are extremely accommodating,” he said.
“Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has followed the example of his predecessor, Cardinal Hume, who showed a willingness to let the traditional Mass be celebrated.”
On Tuesday Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham addressed the Summorum Pontificum conference in Oxford.
He said that Catholics should respond “attentively and consistently” to the Pope’s appeal to stop referring to two different rites when discussing the Extraordinary and Ordinary form of the Roman Rite.
“Whichever form is being used, the same mystery is being celebrated, the same rite followed,” he said.

Bishop Rifan was asked to respond to members of the faithful who remained suspicious of traditionalist Catholicism. “They need to listen to the Pope, simple as that,” he replied.
The bishop is regarded in conservative Catholic circles as a pioneer of liturgical renewal in the traditional sense. In 2002 Campos diocese, then under the control of Bishop Licinio Rangel, was given a special dispensation to freely celebrate Mass in the Extraordinary form.
The diocese was seen by Rome as a test case for the establishment of the motu proprio.
Bishop Rifan revealed that during Benedict XVI’s recent visit to Brazil, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, had told him that the Pontiff regarded Campos as an example of how tradition can work as part of the modern Church.
“He told me that the Pope had seen in Campos how we have two faithful communities, each with its own Mass, living side by side in perfect communion. We can do the same throughout the Church, no problem.”
Bishop Rifan described the Summorum Pontificum as a “real miracle”. He said: “This is a historic moment. Following the Council, there was confusion, there were arguments. We now have clearer vision of the direction of the Church.
“What the Pope has done in this document was not for the good of us, the traditionalists, as a group, but for the good of the whole Church.
“The Pope has said that the two Masses can assist each other. In the traditional Mass we can perhaps put in more participation, we could even put something in the vernacular in certain readings or even accept new prefaces for the Mass for the newly canonised saints. And the new Mass can learn from the traditional Mass the silence, the respect, the sense of mystery.
“The Pope wants to correct lots of abuses that exist in the celebrations of the new Mass.”
He also said that the motu proprio had created a strong incentive for members of the Lefebvrist Society of St Pius X (SSPX) to reconcile themselves with Rome.
“I hope they will profit from this opportunity. The Pope has opened his heart, it is up to them now to respond.
“Perhaps they are held back by a fear of causing divisions within themselves. But they are sincere and I pray that they will come back.”
But this month Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of SSPX, reportedly told La Nacion, a well-respected Argentinian newspaper, that “until things improve” the possibility of a reconciliation between his group and Rome remained remote.
He said that the Pope was willing to reach a rapprochement but faced great obstacles. “There are men in the Vatican Curia who do not work for the Pope, but for others,” he said. “[They work] for groups: one of them is the mafia looking for money in dealings with the Church. There are terrible scandals in this area.”

You can read the rest of our news coverage in this week’s Catholic Herald

Jeez, NYer -- you could have cleaned up the formatting a little! ;-)

It's awful, isn't it! Were I at work with T-1 connection and MS Word, I would have definitely fixed up the text. Unfortunately, I'm operating off a 10 y/o iMac on dial-up. Great computer but the technology used to generate many of today's news stories, it can no longer handle. I'm open to donations for a new computer ;-)

a 10 y/o iMac on dial-up.

LOL! In other words, the wonder is you do it at all! Well, if I weren't so strapped myself, I'd be happy to contribute to the fund!

Very interesting and enlightening! U.S. Bishops, please, read this and get a clue!

It is interesting! Under what rules do these personal parishes operate? Like most things of promise without the correct framework they can bring the promise of disaster as much as the promise of greatness. Humans as a whole tend to bring things of great promise to their knees if they are not bridled from self destruction by rules. ( This is why I am not a Libertarian LOL)

Mel

I don't think that "bringing in" traditionalists is viable. He makes it sound like there's a store somewhere that has shelves and shelves of "traditional" Catholics.

It WOULD mean uprooting families and communities, thereby upsetting THEIR traditional Catholic community.

The problem is societal, don't you think? Perhaps there should be some heavy duty missionary work WITHIN THEIR OWN failing parishes.

I’m not sure what you mean. I was picturing more a priest or priests from FSSP or Christ the King taking over a parish designated for closing (one near me, for example) and celebrating the TLM. The parishioners could continue to attend there with the TLM or go to whatever neighboring parish the Archdiocese had in mind in closing the parish.

Well, then, pardon me for misunderstanding.

We have a parish here in San Francisco, in the Haight-Ashbury, that has been on the brink of extinction.
[The school closed after the debacle and disaster of the Kevin Collins kidnapping in 1980, or so. After the school closed the parish ALMOST folded.]
If it were anywhere else in the city, it would already be closed.
However, the church decided to "save" it and Jesuits run it now. I used to go there for 30 years but left because of the total and absolute impossibility of traffic and parking.

The church holds maybe 1000 people but, on a GOOD Sunday or on Christmas, there may be 75 souls attending Mass. About a dozen or so of them come from the mental halfway house that USED to be the convent.

My point is that, sometimes neighborhoods change IRREVOCABLY and it's often best for the church to cut and run and put their resources where the population of Catholics need them.

Well, we have I think three separate closed parishes here where the parishioners are suing the Archdiocese. I think one of them is still having sit-ins in the church. From what I've read, at least several of the closed parishes had no money problems, good attendance and recent extensive renovations (not wreckovations). One sits on very desirable real estate I hear, and general feeling is that's the reason for the closing.

Anyway, for a church with a good congregation and good finances, where the excuse is the priest shortage, having someone from FSSP or Christ the King would be an ideal solution. Unless you're Cardinal O'Malley!

I don't know where you're located, but in Boston, we had 40 parishes closed under Cardinal Law (in Boston 1984-2002), more than 60 closed under O'Malley (installed 2003), and now there's talk of closing another 40 or so. Boston -- as of 2005 -- had 303 parishes, so we've alreadylost about a quarter. They can't all be in bad neighborhoods!

I don't know where you're located, but in Boston, we had 40 parishes closed under Cardinal Law (in Boston 1984-2002), more than 60 closed under O'Malley (installed 2003), and now there's talk of closing another 40 or so. Boston -- as of 2005 -- had 303 parishes, so we've alreadylost about a quarter. They can't all be in bad neighborhoods!

True enough, they can't all be in bad neighborhoods.

As I JUST said to you in the previous post, I'm from San Francisco. I guess you didn't really read my post. :o)

Sorry! It's 88 degrees here, and this room faces west and gets the full afternoon sun. I start losing concentration at about 70 (50 is my favorite temperature). ;-)

It would depend on the diocese. In Dallas, the bishops (both of Dallas and Ft. Worth) are so stingy that any traditionalist that doesn’t want to attend an SSPX is crowded into a single chapel at a convent, and it is overflowing for two masses every Sunday. (The traditionalist mass in Ft. Worth is on Sunday evenings in a dangerous part of town).

Here it would be great, as those of us with children face a hardship to travel so far and would be able to actually form a community. So many of us aren’t able to due to the refusal of Bishops to provide for us.

In a dioceses with a more generous bishop you are right, it probably wouldn’t be a good option.

Bring in traditionalists to save dying parishes, urges bishop

Yay! That's a parish I'd want to join. If only we could get all our Bishops to see the beauty of this.

Last I heard, the Archdiocese of Boston has another 40 or so parishes that face closing (not of course counting the 100 or so that have already been closed). What's the betting that Cardinal O'Malley will take full advantage of this wonderful idea? What's that? No takers?

It's so very sad. I don't see him going that way. The little parishes have retained a lot more of a traditional feel. I've had the privelege, when visiting relatives, of attending 2 in particular. One has escaped the first wave of closings, the other is partially closed, no regular pastor. I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall. But the folks at these masses seem very devout and devoted to their neighborhood parishes. No takers, indeed. And the Massachusans lose again...