What Does The Prayer Really Say?
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This article greatly interested me. 

Far and wide I hear that parish priests occasionally invite non-Catholic ministers in to their parishes to do things.  They think that is ecumenical. 

So, I was intrigued by this article in the Baltimore Sun.  My emphases and comments.

Funeral prompts firing of priest
S. Baltimore pastor joined by Episcopal priest during Mass

By Liz F. Kay and Kelly Brewington

Sun reporters

November 9, 2007

Baltimore’s new Roman Catholic archbishop removed a priest who was pastor of three South Baltimore parishes for offenses that include officiating at a funeral Mass with an Episcopal priest, which violates canon law.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien personally ordered the Rev. Ray Martin, who has led the Catholic Community of South Baltimore for five years, to resign from the three churches and sign a statement yesterday apologizing for "bringing scandal to the church."

Martin led the funeral Mass on Oct. 15 for Locust Point activist [for what, I wonder?] Ann Shirley Doda at Our Lady of Good Counsel with several clergy, including the Rev. Annette Chappell, the pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Redemption in Locust Point, Martin said.

Doda’s son, Victor, who had invited Chappell to participate in the service, was stunned and outraged by the action taken against Martin.

"I am sickened that they would treat our pastor this way," he said. "It doesn’t sound possible that the church would take such a petty thing and ruin a man’s career."  [Petty?]

Sean Caine, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, said this was one example of repeated administrative and liturgical offenses Martin had committed in more than a year.  [You knew there would have to have been more.]

"Father Martin’s received advice and counsel on numerous occasions from the archdiocese, and he has repeatedly violated church teaching," Caine said. His major offense was not complying with hiring and screening policies, but he also allowed dogs in the sanctuary and did not show up for a baptism, Caine said.

Shirley Doda, who owned the Charles L. Stevens funeral home and was known for fighting to change the path of Interstate 95, was a lifelong Good Counsel parishioner but supported churches in Locust Point, including Redemption.

"I wasn’t there for Annette Chappell," Martin said. "I was there for Shirley Doda. Annette Chappell was there for Shirley Doda."

Chappell did not participate in the consecration of the Eucharist but read the Gospel at the service, Martin said. Someone at the service reported to the archdiocese that Martin gestured to Chappell to take Communion, though Martin said he did not recall doing so.

Only ordained priests and deacons may read the Gospel at Mass, and non-Catholics may not receive Communion.  [The reporter got this right!]

"I think that canon laws exist to protect the church from extremism. I don’t find that this is such an extreme situation," Martin said.

Martin, who has not been defrocked, said he has been barred from celebrating Mass publicly. He will go on an extended retreat and counseling at a monastery in Latrobe, Pa., he said.

"I feel terrible that this is happening to him because, in compassion, he permitted me to participate in the service," Chappell said. She said she has participated in another Catholic funeral with Martin, also at the request of the deceased’s family.

Chappell’s involvement was especially heartfelt, Victor Doda said. During his mother’s weakest hours, it was Chappell who used to visit her daily in the hospital.

Doda said Martin agreed to have Chappell involved and that such ecumenical activity wasn’t unusual at the church.

"In our neighborhood, when you go to church dinner or a church function on a social level, people from all churches are involved," he said. "That’s the kind of relationship the churches have. It’s very, very close."

The statement Martin signed will be read at weekend Masses at the community’s three parishes, Our Lady of Good Counsel, St. Mary’s Star of the Sea and Holy Cross parishes, Martin said.

The Rev. John Wilkinson, who joined the three parishes as associate pastor in July 2006, will serve as their administrator.

Martin met yesterday with O’Brien and the urban vicar, Bishop Denis Madden, at the archdiocese’s downtown headquarters.

Martin, 53, was also penalized for hiring a maintenance man who had criminal charges on his record.

Born in Northern Ireland, Martin moved to Baltimore in 1958 and attended St. Mary’s parish in Govans. He was ordained in 1994, after studying at St. Mary’s Seminary College and St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Roland Park.

He came to Our Lady of Good Counsel in 2000 and became pastor of the Catholic Community of South Baltimore two years later. About 250 people attend Masses at each of the three parishes.

Caine said O’Brien hopes that Martin will be able to return to a healthy ministry, but that decision is up to the priest. "How can we expect our own people to follow the teachings of the church if the priests don’t?" Caine said.

Victor Doda said he has known Martin for more than a decade, describing him as a pillar of the Locust Point community who is so close to his parishioners that he has been known to weep at the funerals at which he presides.

"I cannot think of a more loved priest," he said. "People are going to be outraged."

Joyce Bauerle, a longtime friend of Shirley Doda, said having Chappell at her friend’s funeral service was a beautiful, ecumenical tribute to a woman who battled the status quo.

"What, are we in the Dark Ages again? This is absolutely ridiculous," Bauerle said.

Victor Doda, who now operates the family funeral home, said he learned of Martin’s fate after conducting a funeral with him.

"We were driving back to his church, and he told me," Doda said. "I told him I felt so awful, as if it were my fault. But naturally, he couldn’t be more forgiving. He’s that kind of person."

"This ruins my mother’s legacy," he said. "My mother would be turning in her grave to know that a priest was being victimized like this."

A biretta tip goes to PH of CA for this good story from the California Catholic Daily about what is happening in the Diocese of Monterey, under the guidance of His Excellency Most Reverend richard Garcia.

My emphases and comments.

Published: November 9, 2007
“At a time of day that is convenient for the people”

Plans for Traditional Latin Mass move forward in Monterey diocese, extraordinary rite also being celebrated in other dioceses

Monterey Bishop Richard Garcia has begun to fulfill his promise of assuring celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass in his diocese.

In July, the Diocese of Monterey announced that it would have two Tridentine Masses in place by September—one at the northern end, the other at the southern end of the diocese. Initially, the Tridentine Mass was to be celebrated twice a month at both northern and southern non-parish locations.

In a September pastoral letter entitled “In Him We Live,” Bishop Garcia reiterated his promise – but noted that the number of intended locations for celebrating the Tridentine Mass had risen to three. The third location for the Mass, said the bishop, will serve the central region of the diocese.

“Many [not "few"] of you have asked about our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI’s recent ‘Moto proprio Summorum Pontificum’ regarding the availability of the 1962 mass according to the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope John XXIII,” wrote Garcia. The bishop explained that “both forms [of the Mass] celebrate our participation in sacrificial death and glorious Resurrection of Jesus Christ: in the ‘ordinary’ form or post-Vatican II, we do so by means of our English (vernacular) language and communal prayer, while in the extraordinary or pre-Vatican II form, participation also includes listening to the prayers in Latin and joining our hearts to the words and actions.”  [YES!  Well said!]

The bishop, however, hinted that he might not meet the September deadline. [That’s okay.  They can be patient.] In celebrating the Tridentine Mass, said Garcia, “the Church has to be liturgically appropriate.” He said he was seeking “the assistance of Priests who can celebrate the Mass as our Holy Father has required, with the ability and heartfelt desire to celebrate the 1962 Latin Mass.” [I think I would be okay with a guy who didn’t really want to do it, but tried to do his very best.  As a matter of fact, I would admire him.] Garcia noted that he wanted the Mass celebrated “at a time of day that is convenient for the people [Hurray!] and Priests but without infringing on the already busy Sunday schedule of Masses in many of our Parishes.” [A very real problem.  It is hard to balance those elements.  It will take time to work things out.  Lay people can really help this process by being cordial and helpful in the parish.]

According to a Sept. 6 SanLuisObispo.com report, diocesan spokesman Kevin Drabinski said definitely that celebrations of the Tridentine Mass would not begin in September. He noted, however, that the locations for the Mass would be Pismo Beach, San Ardo, and at Mission San Juan Bautista.

The November Observer, the Monterey diocesan newspaper, reported that the first of the promised Masses has begun. Fr. Michael Bell celebrates the Mass using the 1962 Roman Missal promulgated by Pope John XXIII at St. Paul the Apostle’s church, a Franciscan Conventual parish, in Pismo Beach – but not twice a month, as indicated in July, but every Sunday at 12:30 p.m.

St. Paul’s also has weekly Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, on Thursdays from 1-8 p.m.

Dioceses where celebrations of the Tridentine Mass have begun this year besides Monterey include San Diego, San Jose, Orange, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. Though the Diocese of Santa Rosa has two locations for the Tridentine Mass celebrations (under the indult), Bishop Daniel Walsh in August said, “It will be some time before we see what concretely this permission for the use of the old missal will mean for our Diocese.”   [Note that Bishop Walsh did not suggest that he would decide if permission was given.]

I take this to be a very positive development. 

Good for Bishop Garcia!

People in the Monterey diocese should express their prayerful best wishes to him in a friendly and respectful way.
 

To all the Marines out there, present and past, thank you and Happy Birthday!

Tonight I will drink a 1775 Punch in your honor. 

OORAH

The New York Times has an article on attending the Traditional Latin Mass in Merchantville, NJ, near Philadelphia.  One of my quotes about the older Mass is paraphrased in the article.

My emphases and comments.

November 10, 2007
Latin Mass Draws Interest After Easing of Restrictions
By NEELA BANERJEE

MERCHANTVILLE, N.J. — Kelly Rein, 16, used to spend most Thursday nights doing homework. These days, Kelly wears a lace mantilla over her striped T-shirt and stovepipe jeans and attends a class on the traditional Latin Mass.  [This is so much better than saying "the Latin Mass".]

“I always attended the English Mass, but I never really paid much attention,” said Kelly, who took her parents and sisters to St. Peter Roman Catholic Church in this suburban Philadelphia town, where the first traditional Latin rite is scheduled for December.

At a Catholic summer camp, Kelly was struck by the reverence of the Latin Mass.

“It’s quiet,” she said. “People are paying attention. ["active participation"!]  In the English Mass, it’s noisy. There are babies crying. But here people are completely focused on God.”

More than 40 years ago , the groundbreaking Second Vatican Council introduced Mass in the vernacular, sending the Latin Mass into disuse and alienating some Catholics.

But last summer, Pope Benedict XVI eased restrictions on the rite, and new celebrations of the Latin Mass are flowering. [well, they slipped with the term, didn’t they] To the surprise of many, the rite has attracted priests and parishioners too young to have experienced the Latin Mass when it was the norm.

For adherents of the traditional Latin Mass, the interest of young people is proof of its enduring resonance and offers hope that it may revitalize an American church struggling to hold on to the young.

But the groundswell that many backers had predicted has not surfaced and seems unlikely, Catholic liturgists and church officials say. [The amazing things about liberals and progressivists, in any field or sphere of life, is that they want you to deny the evidence that is plain in front of your face, the evidence of your senses.  They will look at the sky and call it green, if blue isn’t good for their agenda.] The traditional Latin, or Tridentine, Mass has emerged in just one or two parishes in most of the 25 largest dioceses in the country, according to a phone survey of the dioceses.

In some dioceses, there is so far almost no interest, diocesan officials said. 

“Those that turn to it are looking for a sense of mystery, a sense of the sacred they find is missing otherwise,” said the Rev. Jerome Fasano, pastor of St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church in Clifton, Va., which began celebrating the Tridentine Mass in mid-September. “The more people are exposed to it, the more they are drawn to it.

“But it won’t be multitudes. ["pro multis"?] I don’t think the traditional Latin Mass will be normative by any means.”

The Tridentine Mass was codified at the Council of Trent in 1570, after which it is named. In it, the priest faces the altar, not the congregation. He prays in Latin, much of it in a whisper, [Thanks for avoiding the cliches!] although readings from Scripture and the sermon are in the vernacular. A missal in Latin and English allows parishioners to follow along.

After the switch to the vernacular, Pope John Paul II allowed the Tridentine Mass to be celebrated, but only with the permission of local diocesan bishops.

In July, however, Pope Benedict issued a letter giving parishes the authority to celebrate the Mass without obtaining bishops’ permissions.

“What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us, too,” Pope Benedict wrote.

Where the Tridentine Mass is now being revived, the response has been encouraging, advocates said. In Clifton, 200 people show up for the Wednesday evening Mass at St. Andrew’s. Another is held on Saturday mornings.

At the first Tridentine Mass at St. Leo the Great Church in Pawtucket, R.I., on Oct. 21, about 180 people attended the sunset service, filling nearly all the pews.

A sense of the holy and the mysterious pulls across generations, drawing in children and their parents, who themselves are often too young to recall the Tridentine Mass. [The conclusion is that this is probably going to grow.]

“I have no memory of the Latin Mass from my childhood,” Anne McLaughlin said at St. Leo’s. “But for me it’s so refreshing to see him facing the east, the Tabernacle, focusing on Christ.”

Her daughter Aine, 15, agreed and said, “It’s so much prettier.”

Experts on the church say they have been surprised that young people have shown such interest.

“There’s a curiosity, and it is consistent with people looking for the transcendent and holy, which they maybe didn’t see in the Mass they attended growing up,” said the Rev. Keith F. Pecklers, professor of liturgy at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Still, those who study Catholic youth say that fewer than one in five attend Mass weekly and that the Tridentine Mass will not draw them in greater numbers. Instead, they are seeking a greater focus on social justice and sexual equality, said Vincent Bulduc, professor of sociology at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt., who conducted a study of Catholic college students in 2004.

The way Catholics came to worship after the Vatican II council has been a source of passionate conflict for some. A tiny but vocal minority [You can hear the Rawlsian undercurrent.] was outraged by what they considered abrupt and misguided changes of the council, and Pope Benedict’s letter was meant to heal that rift.

“One priest said on a blog that now we can’t be considered the nutty aunt in the attic,” [That would have been Fr. Z on WDTPRS!] said Jason King of Seattle, a board member of Una Voce America, a group that promotes the Tridentine Mas