What Does The Prayer Really Say?
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I got this nice piece of TLM news from the Diocese of Fresno. It involves a friend of mine, Fr. Angel Sotelo.

FRESNO TRADITIONAL MASS SOCIETY

Contact: Keven Smith                               FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Email: FTMS@uvfresno.org

UNIQUE CATHOLIC RITUAL RETURNS TO FRESNO

Pentecost Solemn High Mass to Involve Three Clergy, Incense, and
Gregorian Chant

Even before Pope Paul VI approved a new form of the Catholic Mass in  1970, it was a rare privilege for Catholics to attend a Solemn High Mass. On Sunday,  May 11 at 3:30 p.m., St. Anthony of Padua in Fresno will see the return of this  ancient ceremony, which requires three clergy, incense, and Gregorian chant.

The Solemn High Mass is the full ceremonial form of the 1962 Missal,  or extraordinary form of the Roman Rite. During the May 11 Mass, Fr. Matthew McNeely  of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter will be assisted by Fr. Angel Sotelo of St. Columba’s Church in Chowchilla, [HUZZAH!] as well as a subdeacon and several altar servers.

“Although we have a Latin Mass every Sunday, the Solemn High Mass is  an even more beautiful and reverent liturgy,” says Keven Smith, president of the  Fresno Traditional Mass Society. “Pentecost is an ideal time for this Mass. We very  much appreciate the extra effort of our priests and pastor in making this possible.”

Much of the Gregorian chant will be performed by the St. Blaise  Schola Cantorum. Mass will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the main sanctuary, with printed English  translations available.

The Fresno Traditional Mass Society is a chapter of Una Voce America.  Its members work to promote the traditional Latin Mass and Gregorian chant.

If you would like more information about this topic, please email  FTMS@uvfresno.org

I have been in Florida for a few days.   I about an hour I start my trip back to the Sabine Farm!

Let us hope for a boring journey.

The great gift which is Summorum Pontificum is bearing fruit everywhere. 

Good news comes from Knoxville, TN, where our friend Henry, long-time WDTPRSer, has reported about a very fine celebration of Holy Mass. 

Knoxville’s First Solemn Latin Mass in Decades

This past Sunday, April 20, area Catholics gathered in joy and thanksgiving at Knoxville’s beautiful Holy Ghost Catholic Church—currently celebrating its centennial year—to attend the city’s first traditional solemn Latin Mass in the four decades since the newer vernacular Mass was introduced in the years following the Second Vatican Council.

This historic Mass was sponsored by the Knoxville Latin Mass community whose weekly Masses are celebrated by Fr. John Arthur Orr each Sunday at St. Therese Catholic Church in Clinton. Fr. Orr, spiritual director at Knoxville Catholic High School and St. Therese pastor, has served the Latin Mass community since his 2005 appointment as its chaplain by then Bishop Joseph E. Kurtz.

In addition to Fr. Orr as celebrant, diocesan priests Fr. David Carter and Fr. Patrick Resen served as deacon and subdeacon for the Mass, and venerable Holy Ghost pastor Msgr. Xavier Mankel attended in choir. The sacred ministers at Holy Ghost’s beautiful old high altar wore new cloth of gold vestments of the classical Roman style so rarely seen in recent years, and were assisted in the sanctuary by master of ceremonies Michael Garner, thurifer Joshua Jakubowski, three acolytes, and six torch bearers from the Latin Mass community’s enthusiastic corps of altar servers, which includes essentially every boy of appropriate age among the community’s families. A dozen 4th degree Knights of Columbus from two local assemblies provided a color guard for a truly colorful as well as holy occasion.

"Today we celebrate not only the Sabbath of the Lord’s Resurrection, as we do each Sunday. Today we celebrate not only the first hundred years of this Holy Ghost Catholic Church. Today we sing a new song to the Lord even as we use the ancient words, the songs of the holy angels sanctus, sanctus, sanctus and gloria in excelsis Deo. Even with settings centuries old, they are new for we sing them today to the eternal Triune God: Father, Son and Spirit. Over the years in this holy place, the Sacrifice of the Mass has been offered more than 36,500 times. For sixty-two of these hundred years the solemn rites—basically as we today are observing them and participating with heart, and hand, and voice—were celebrated." So began Fr. John Arthur Orr’s homily of a grace and power that is too seldom heard from today’s pulpits.

A standing room only congregation filled the Holy Ghost church pews which seat a maximum of 450 and over-flowed into temporary seating in the two transepts before the St. Joseph and Blessed Virgin side altars, as well as into the basement where some late arrivals resorted to viewing the Mass on closed circuit TV in preference to standing in the church above with others unable to find seats.

In addition, the choir loft at the rear of the nave was filled to capacity with a combined diocesan orchestra and choir of 50 members that was directed by Mary Frazier Garner and sang the principal choral parts of the Mass—the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei—in the famous "Coronation Mass" setting composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Members of the choir, as well as those in the congregation, represented most of the Catholic churches in the Knoxville area, as well as parishes as far away as Chattanooga and Johnson City, a hundred miles distant from Knoxville in opposite directions. It seemed auspicious that, on this final day of Pope Benedict XVI’s first U.S. visit, this solemn Mass in the extraordinary form that he has restored to the liturgical heart of the Church was accompanied by the sacred music of Mozart that he is said to love most.

A truly special occasion was signaled by a church already beginning to fill over an hour before the Mass was scheduled to begin, and by the palpable atmosphere of silent anticipation and reverence that all displayed prior to the beginning of Mass. But at the beginning of the prelude "Ye watchers and ye holy ones" by organ, choir, and orchestra, a number of heads turned back toward the choir loft to see the source of the cascading sounds of such unaccustomed fullness and magnificence.

Especially printed Latin-English Mass booklets including both the complete order of Mass and the readings and propers for the 4th Sunday after Easter were provided, though the supply of 360 booklets failed to anticipate a crowd that far exceeded the expectations of those who had worked and prayed for months in preparation for the occasion. Fortunately, however, many carried into church worn old missals that they evidently had kept and treasured over the decades. But in addition to the expected adults old enough to remember the Latin Mass, young families with a half dozen or more children were also conspicuous among those in attendance.

One of the community’s members reported a week ago a nightmare in which so many showed up that people had to be turned away and so many approached the altar rail that Holy Communion took over an hour. But with three priests distributing, there was just about enough time for the choir to sing their prepared Latin selections including Adoro te devote, Ave Verum Corpus,  Panis angelicus, and O salutaris Hostia.  The entire Mass itself was sung by the ministers, choir, and men’s schola, but following the Regina coeli at the end of Mass, the whole congregation virtually raised the roof with the recessional "Holy God, we praise thy name", the anthem of traditional Catholics which is a vernacular paraphrase of the great Te Deum that is the Church’s official Latin hymn of thanksgiving.

Instead of rushing to their cars in typical parish Sunday Mass fashion, many lingered for joyous and thankful celebration and fellowship long after the Mass had ended. They spoke of the moving beauty and reverence of this first solemn traditional Latin Mass here in so long, of how the elaborate actions of the ministers at the altar and the fragrance of incense had combined with sight and sound to provide an enveloping atmosphere of reverence that lifted them up to heaven in adoration and worship. Some spoke of the rare opportunity to hear some of the Church’s greatest sacred music presented not merely in concert but in active support of the liturgy that had inspired it, and of their pride that our city and diocese had been capable of such an impressive liturgical offering to the greater glory of God.

Click here for photos of the Mass provided by Roy Ehman (www.ourladyoffatima.org) who has so faithfully and superbly documented the progress of the Knoxville Latin Mass community since our first traditional Latin Mass at the beginning of Advent in 2005.

Good news has come in:

Father,
 
     I just wanted to let you know that the EF training for priests and servers at the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary community in Still River, MA was a great success!  I called to sign myself and 3 friends up for the server training, and they had to schedule us for a different day, because so many priests had signed up that there was no room for us!  The four of us eventually got down there (we all go to school in the Diocese of Manchester) and had a really great training session, but the best part is that the community down there told us that if we knew of any priests who were interested in learning the Extraordinary form they would be more than happy to set up more training sessions.  I already have a Ukrainian Rite priest, who I am friendly with through my 4th Degree Assembly, interested in heading down there for a training session, and I would be overjoyed if there are any other priests in the New England area who would be interested.  I would be more than willing to be a contact person to get everything set up, or they can contact the Slaves directly through their website.  Just wanted to update you on this. 

Unfortunately, still no luck getting an EF Mass at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH though.  Oh well…
 
Oremus Pro Invicem,

Brick by brick!

I got some really nice feedback from via e-mail:

Dear Father:

After being a Protestant for many years I was confirmed into the Catholic church 5 years ago….  I have always struggled with the communion issue—in the hand or by mouth…  your PodCast gave the best convincing arguement I have ever heard on why it was better to receive by mouth.  So I have been partaking by mouth for the past week.

Apparently I made the right decision as I was spiritually attacked all last week, which I endured without discouragement.  I will pass your podcast along to my friends that they may listen and be informed.   This will also help me in my spiritual growth as a lay Discalced Carmelite.

May God Bess you…I pray for you and for all priests daily.

This nice note from a kind reader has motivated me simply to repost my PODCAzT about Communion in the hand, in case some new visitors to WDTPRS haven’t seen it:

We tackle a thorny issue: Communion in the hand. 

To help us drill into this practice, which we can only hope will diminish over time, we have the help of comments by His Excellency Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments.

We also will hear from Thomas E. Woods Jr., in his fairly new book, Sacred Then and Sacred Now: The Return of the Old Latin Mass.

In case you are wondering, I add plenty of my own thoughts on the matter.





 
http://www.wdtprs.com/podcazt/08_02_25.mp3

The fine canonically focused blog In the Light of the Law has a fascinating post today about removal of a bishop from the clerical state.  We often hear about removal of priests, but not of bishops.   But, bishops are clerics too.

Let’s have a look:

After decades of disinterest, suddenly two Canon 1405 cases?

POST ONE: Pope Benedict XVI is believed to be mulling over the possibility of expelling a bishop, Fernando Lugo, from the clerical state. That would certainly be a first under the 1983 Code (the Jacques Gaillot case in 1995 was not a precedent; Gaillot was removed from office, but not from the clerical state), and I’m pretty sure it never happened under the 1917 Code.

Lugo, though suspended and removed from ecclesiastical office, remains a cleric, but his election under a reformist banner to Paraguay’s presidency upped the ante. Clergy are forbidden to assume civil governing offices (see 1983 CIC 285.3 and my negative conclusions about "Permission given to priest to run for political office", 2007 CLSA Advisory Opinions 60-62) and bishops in political office are at odds with, oh, about a dozen other norms.

Canon 290,3 says that removal from the clerical state can be granted (or imposed, if it comes to that) on deacons for "grave cause" or presbyters for "most grave cause". But the canon doesn’t even mention dismissal of a bishop from the clerical state. It’s as if no one could imagine it ever happening.

Lugo has reportedly offered to "resign" but it is unclear exactly what he meant by that, or he could face a penal process with the pope as judge per 1983 CIC 1405, 1. Ironically the pope could hear this matter as a case of judging "those who hold the highest civil office of a state" or he could hear it as a case of judging "bishops in penal matters." But regardless of which kind of case he considers, removal of a bishop from the clerical state, and not just from office, is an extremely serious action, something that hasn’t happened for centuries.

Okay, so, maybe it’s time it did.

+++

POST TWO: How utterly ironic.

I had intended the above title, about the "two Canon 1405 cases" to refer to two possible applications of Canon 1405 in the one case of Bp. Fernando Lugo. But now I see another news item that would involve, of all things, Canon 1405 for a second, completely separate, time.

I refer to Richard Sipe’s denunciation of, among others, Theodore Cdl. McCarrick (ret. Washington) on the grounds of sexual misconduct. I know next to nothing about Sipe, but his statement leaves little room for nuance: "I know the names of at least four priests who have had sexual encounters with Cardinal McCarrick. I have documents and letters that record the first hand testimony and eye witness accounts of McCarrick, then archbishop of Newark, New Jersey actually having sex with a priest, and at other times subjecting a priest to unwanted sexual advances."

The same Canon 1405 I referenced above reserves solely to the Roman Pontiff the right to judge all cases involving cardinals and, in penal matters, bishops. Under either heading, let alone both, the only person authorized to investigate, and if warranted judge, Sipes’ allegations, is the pope. No ecclesiastical authority may move on this matter without the consent of the Roman Pontiff.

I do think, however, that in conscience, (though not by canon law given the abrogation of 1917 CIC 1935.2), Sipe is bound to send to the Holy See all the information he has about these matters, and not wait to be asked for it.