I don’t know if you heard this or not, but there is now yet another church in Rome where you can find celebrations of Holy Mass according to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
According to Messa In Latino, the TLM will be at the Opus Dei church Sant’Eugenio every third Saturday.
A couple good things about this.
First, this is an important parish.
Second, as one of my correspondents wrote:
This is truly good news and a potential game-changer. If they decided to go public with it in their parish, it’s going to have an impact from outside the strictly traditionalist circles, and the usual suspects won’t be able to pretend it’s just another fringe group doing their thing.
Brick by brick!
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This is also great because it demonstrates support for the TLM from Opus Dei, which has not been known as a strong source of support thus far.
Interesting story:
When my wife and I were honeymooning in Rome last fall, I needed someone to hear my confession prior to Mass at St. Peter’s the next morning. Around 7-8 p.m., we were walking back to our hotel north of the Borghese gardens, and found that a Mass had just ended at St. Eugenio. I was rather surprised at the numbers of people attending a vigil mass.
Well, I speak no Italian, but I do speak Spanish, know a bit of French, and am quite good at Latin. My wife (who only speaks English) and I walked in, and sought out a priest. After getting by on the chance that most Italians can understand Spanish, I managed to have the secretary find the priest who was just then unvesting.
I asked him whether he spoke English, and he answered, “no.” I then asked him about Spanish and French; the answer to both of which being, ‘a little’. I then asked him in Spanish whether he could hear my confession, forgetting that “poder” doesn’t carry the same sense in Spanish as in English. He responded, with a smirk, “Pues, yo tengo las facultades…” (Well, I have the faculties to do so…”), thus chastising my grammatical deficit. I proceeded to give a confession in mixed Spanish, French and Latin, which was quite the endeavour in itself, and he then absolved me in Latin.
Being a bit of a linguist, this was the most interesting confession I have ever given. If anyone knows this priest, please give him my greatest thanks for his willingness to work with an American stranger late one Saturday night in September.
Opus Dei is deeply devoted to the Holy Father. His indications, practice, teaching, will naturally have an influence on their life and liturgy.
Their “charism” is a very lay outlook, so naturally they don’t tend to be overly concerned with details of the liturgy, even as the Mass is the center of their interior life. Their practice of the NO is extremely reverent, vertically oriented.
And yes, this is great news.
Slightly malformed link to “Messa In Latino”, Father. (Firefox 3.5.7)
@Mike: In the meantime you can use this link to get to Messa In Latino.
Full path: http://blog.messainlatino.it/2010/02/nuova-messa-roma-grazie-allopus-dei.html
I don’t know very much about Opus Dei, other than the fact that they have some connection to violent albino monks, and are extraordinarily evil, even for Catholics!
This Latin Mass business just seems to indicate that they are backward bigots as well.
(Why aren’t the sarcasm tags working?)
TLM will be at the Opus Dei church Sant’Eugenio every third Saturday.
It seems they’ve incorporated a common US confession schedule:
Confessions at St X’s on the first and third Saturdays of the month unless the Dow is off at least 100 pts for the previous week, or . . . the price of gasoline has increased ten cents or more, or . . . the President’s approval rating is below 49%, or . . . you’ve paid your car insurance in the past week, or . . . your household thermostat is set above 80, or . . .
Otherwise, Confessions by appointment.
This is also great because it demonstrates support for the TLM from Opus Dei, which has not been known as a strong source of support thus far.
Comment by Tim Ferguson
Actually, OD had a strong devotion to the TLM. It agreed to deviate from it in order to become a Personal Prelature.
rotbrown–that’s in no way typical of Opus Dei.
Their priests are zealous in hearing confessions.
robtbrown –
“It agreed to deviate from it [the TLM] in order to become a Personal Prelature.”
Do you have a source for that?
Thanks –
I have some friends in Opus Dei in Toronto and have attended their evenings of reflection and annual retreats there. They will have Mass in either form in latin ONLY when no non-OD members are present. This story is very good news indeed.
robtbrown
Also keep in mind that Sant’Eugenio is kind of out of the way, and there are confessions available at the Patriarchal Basilicas, the Gesu’ and Sacro Cuore near Termini all morning and all afternoon, in a variety of languages.
also Santa Susanna, the American parish in Rome. I’m assuming they offer confessions in English too. Sta Susanna is practically next door to Santa Maria della Vittoria, a small church famous for the Bernini sculpture of St Theresa in ecstasy.
Hmm … I believe that — with his parody of a confessions schedule — robtbrown was commenting on the Opus Dei TLM schedule, not their confessions schedules. At any rate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josemar%C3%ADa_Escriv%C3%A1#Towards_the_liturgy
”The present Opus Dei prelate Bishop Javier Echevarría Rodríguez said that Escrivá strove to follow whatever was indicated by the competent authority regarding the celebration of Mass. When the new rites were adapted by the Catholic Church after Vatican II, Echevarría said that Escrivá “accepted the reform with serenity and obedience”. Since his prayer was much integrated with the liturgy for the past 40 years, Escrivá found the shift difficult and asked Echevarría to coach him in celebrating the new rites. Although he missed the practices of the old rites, especially some gestures such as the kiss on the paten which showed love, he prohibited his followers to ask for any dispensation for him “out of a spirit of obedience to ecclesiastical norms”. “He has decided to show his love for the liturgy through the new rite”, commented Echevarría. However, when Msgr. Annibale Bugnini, Secretary of the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, found out about Escrivá’s difficulties, he granted Escrivá the possibility of celebrating the Mass using the old rite. Whenever Escrivá celebrated this rite, he did so only in the presence of one Mass server.”
The next-to-last sentence here is interesting. In the TLM was never prohibited, why was Msgr. Bugnini’s permission needed? And who was he to be granting such permission, anyway?
Sam Schmitt,
When I was in Rome, it was common knowledge.
robtbrown—that’s in no way typical of Opus Dei.
Their priests are zealous in hearing confessions.
Comment by Mike
robtbrown
Also keep in mind that Sant’Eugenio is kind of out of the way, and there are confessions available at the Patriarchal Basilicas, the Gesu’ and Sacro Cuore near Termini all morning and all afternoon, in a variety of languages.
Comment by Gregory DiPippo
The comment I cited referred to a TLM mass once a month. The analogy I used was the asymmetric confession SCHEDULE in the US. The obvious conclusion was that I was referring to a similar scheduling situation with the OD TLM, not with Confessions.
BTW, I almost always went to Confession at Santa Maria Maggiore. It was very accessible both in location and time, plus one of my two favorite churches in Rome.
Sam Schmitt,
Thinking about it, I think one of the times I heard it was from a good friend who attended the Santa Croce 1st cycle before transferring to the Angelicum. Later, he worked in the Cong of Bishops–and, no, he was not from the States.
Rotbrown,
Check.
Robtbrown,
And pardon the typo on your handle.
Thinking about it, I think
As bad a beginning of a sentence as is possible.
Rotbrown
ROT stands for Roger O Thornhill.
That’s great news. I was in Rome last week and atempted to get into the FSSP church at 4.30pm. I was so disappointed. The church was locked and, from the outside, it looked almost derelict. The paint was peeling off the doors and it looked very un-cared for. What a contrast with the Brigitine Church just on the other side of the Piazza Farnese – Blessed Sacrament exposed and about 20 people and 8 sisters praying. The FSSP needs to get its act together here – our enemies will judge us harshly otherwise.
On another matter, I was able to walk into the sacristy at St Peter’s and celebrate Holy Mass, no questions asked. I was not asked to show my celebret – and neither was my fellow priest who did the same. I heard a couple of high Anglicans boasting recently that they had been able to do likewise.
frdgss
The FSSP does not OWN the building of Trinita’ dei Pellegrini, nor does the Diocese of Rome. Like many churches in Rome’s historical center, it is the property of the Italian government; the FSSP cannot do the necessary work on the facade without the government’s approval of the entire project on all levels. In Italy, unfortunately, such things tend to happen at a glacial pace, but be assured that there are long terms plans for extensive work to restore the building and its furnishings. A lot has already been accomplished on the inside, including the throwing out of a truly surreal amount of garbage, the result of decades of neglect on the part of those who were using the church before the personal parish was established.
Sounds like you are reading too much Descartes!
;>
Another brick! Our pastor told me yesterday he will be celebrating TLM on Thursday evenings during Lent. He gets it!
Thanks, Gregory, for clearing up the problem with SS Trinita dei Pellegrini. I feel badly when people don’t understand what’s going on and judge by outward appearances. I wish the church could be restored magically overnight. It has been our experience here in the U.S. that when the FSSP is granted a “building,” it usually is in a run-down (sometimes dangerous) part of town and much fixing and restoring is necessary. Congregations try to be as generous as possible in contributing to building funds. It takes time. The FSSP has had the Rome parish less than two years I think.
Just in general terms I agree that the TLM every third Sunday is great–better than no TLM every third Sunday. Brick by brick. A good beginning. But why should the beginning take so long? Where do we get more bricks? Why not the TLM is now the 8am Mass in at least one church in every medium sized city in western civilization? The Pope wants it to be the 8am Mass in every church, and every bishop knows this going back to July 2007. How do we get out of the beginning stage and into the intermediate stage?
sorry–that should be 8am Sunday Mass in both sentences.