Pope Benedict gave us a great gift in the provisions of Summorum Pontificum.
Get out there and USE THEM!
Now is not the time to fall back or hesitate or wring hands.
Organize! Stop whining! Make it happen!
From a reader:
The small town of Veneta, Oregon (population less than 5,000), which is 20 or so minutes from Eugene is home to an SSPX parish and St. Catherine of Siena Catholic church. Starting this Sunday, the TLM will be celebrated at St. Catherine’s every Sunday and on Holy Days. There is no TLM offered in the area and there are many large parishes in Eugene, but this priest has decided to take up this cross in order to allow a licit option (at least for the celebration of Mass) for those who want to practice and worship traditionally.
The New Evangelization.
Give that SSPX chapel some competition and bring those people back to greater manifest unity with the Roman Pontiff and the local bishop.
Fr Z Kudos to the priest.
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Our diocese now has one more priest celebrating the TLM/EF Mass. I payed for him to attend a five day EF tutorial at the FSSP seminary in mid-May. This morning he celebrated his first public EF Mass and did a fine job. God bless him.
@ cardnal:
Yes, God bless him and God bless you, cardnal, for doing this.
Veneta, huh? I’ll have to tell my son about this. Hope he’s close enough to get there going through the freeway.
Thanks Bea. The priest’s goal for the last two years was to teach himself how to celebrate the EF Mass, but he told me after he attended the FSSP tutorial that he realized he could not have done so. He was very, very grateful the the five days dedicated to learning the EF and to the FSSP for teaching him.
Beginning in March, our parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the UK has had a monthly TLM celebrated by a visiting priest at the request of several members of the parish council. Already more people are kneeling for Holy Communion in the OF and a group of young people have been travelling further afield to experience the traditional Mass in other parishes.
acardnal: if you don’t mind my asking, how much was the tuition at the FSSP tutorial? Their website for the training sessions seems to be down. My husband and I think that the idea of offering to pay for the training of a local priest to say the TLM is a great idea, and we’d love a ballpark figure so that we can try to plan for it. Of course, we realize that the priest would have other expenses in addition to the tuition (travel, etc), but having a concrete number would be very helpful. :)
Now if only the same thing could happen in another small town in Eastern Oregon where I live! The difference is that the new ABp Sample in Portland (Veneta is in the Portland Archdiocese) is very supportive of the TLM whereas the Bishop of Baker, where my small town is located, is not at all supportive—and that is being charitable.
Pie and Palestrina,
The FSSP training is $400. Very reasonable if you ask me. The cost of each workshop covers all classroom instruction, training materials, meals, and room & board at the seminary for the full five days. Scholarships are available from Una Voce America (contact Jason King) for those in need.
http://www.fssptraining.org/
Pie and Palestrina, $400 as stated above by jlmorrell.
I really encourage readers of this blog to just ask a priest if they would be willing to learn the EF if you paid for the tutorial. You might be surprised who agrees to that proposition! I also told my parish priest – who just completed the training – that if he knows of any other diocesan priest who wants to be trained to let me know. I’ll pay the tuition if they can get themselves there.
EF Masses are now being offered at the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish, East Farmington WI. That is south of the town of Osceola, WI, on Wisconsin 35 and across the St. Croix River from Taylors Falls, MN. Attendance at the Sunday Masses have been gratifying.
Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite as follows: Sundays, 12:15 pm. Thursdays, 8:30 am. First Fridays, 7:00 pm. First Saturdays, 8:30 am.
In my opinion the following is an effective course of action. Call on every priest that is not openly hostile to the Traditional Mass. And I mean every priest. Tell them of your true love for Christ and his holy Catholic Church. Explain to them how much the Traditional Latin Mass means to you and your desire to see others be exposed to it.
Then tell them that you will pay for and organize everything if they will only learn the Traditional Mass and offer with some regularity, even if privately. This is key. You must remove every practical obstacle. Only require their study and commitment of time. By doing this you show your seriousness and that this is the highest priority. You may be surprised that will find a few priests you never expected to be interested. Then you can continue to call and follow up them going forward.
I’m convinced, based on personal experience, that this can be very effective.
I wish there were courses in offering the Novus Ordo in Latin. That sort of Mass is something that even money won’t buy…
The Novus Ordo in Latin? Rare as hen’s teeth.
Most folks probably figure if they’re going to do the work might as well go for the real deal :)
That they chose the name of a Dominican saint is a tad irritating to us Dominicans, who are also just down the road. Leave our order out of this. A fair number of Veneta and nearby residents actually moved there specifically for this little “Vatican West.”
@jlmorrell and any SoCal Latinists: Our chaplain at our monastery of nuns in Hollywood offers sung Latin OF on Sunday mornings, 7 AM. If he’s away, it might be recited Latin or English, depending on the capabilities of his replacement, but it’s almost always Latin OF on Sundays.
This is wonderful news as I live about 20 miles from Veneta. I have been very interested in going to an EF Mass and had looked at St. Thomas Becket, the St. Pius X church in Veneta, but am glad that this is available now instead. We are parishoners at a Byzantine Catholic Church in Springfield, OR. How fortunate to have 3 options available for Liturgy!
Random Friar says:
That they chose the name of a Dominican saint is a tad irritating to us Dominicans, who are also just down the road. Leave our order out of this. A fair number of Veneta and nearby residents actually moved there specifically for this little “Vatican West.”
Does the Newman Center at Eugene have an SOP mass?
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@robtbrown: As far as I know, it is still an OF English Mass in Eugene. Our parish in Portland is pretty Latin-heavy, and do celebrate the OP rite monthly, and for most Holy Days.
If you don’t have the TLM in your town, pray that the SSPX sets up shop, you’ll get one much more quickly at your diocesan church.
EXCHIEF- I have a lot of trouble understanding what you’re saying. Bishop Cary (of Eastern Oregon) was our pastor the year before he became bishop. While he was our pastor, he made sure we always had TLM twice a month. When the associate priest who normally did it was unavailable, he got a substitute or he did it himself. TLM was never cancelled and I have been to TLM twice with Father Liam as celebrant before he was the bishop. Since Father Liam left us to become Bishop Cary, we have had no Latin mass at all. I haven’t even heard there will be a change now that we have Archbishop Sample. I hope we get it back.
Dear Fr Z, I liked very much your careful wording: “greater manifest unity”. Bravo.
jlmorrell and acardnal: many thanks! When I posted, the FSSP training site was temporarily down. :)
$400 seems extremely reasonable.