I received this note about a good opportunity in Newark (odder words may never have been written):
There will be a Solemn Pontifical Mass (extraordinary form) on Tuesday, July 16th — the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel — at the Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Newark New Jersey. The Mass is at 12:00 Noon.
The celebrant of the Mass will be His Excellency, Arthur J. Serratelli, Bishop of Paterson, New Jersey. (The Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Newark is the home parish of Bishop Serratelli.) His Excellency will celebrate the Mass at the Faldstool.
The music at Mass will include the Messe Sollonnelle by Louis Vierne (1870-1937), the renowned blind composer who during most of his career was principle organist of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, as well as motets by Franz Schubert and Tomas Luis da Victoria and traditional Italian hymns honoring Our Lady the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Following Mass, there will be the annual outdoor Procession of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel throughout the parish which then concludes back in the Church with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. [I was at that procession a few years ago. Wonderful! It had a high participation. This would be a great experience for children and young people who haven’t grown up with this kind of procession.]
The Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel is located at 259 Oliver Street in Newark not far from Newark Penn Station. The Church is within walking distance of the station and is also an inexpensive ride by taxi. [Car pool!]
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There is also a decent-sized parking lot behind the church which I used when I was there in November. It might be a hot & sweaty walk from Penn Station in July! It’s not real close, but is walkable.
This is a great feast of our Lady in her role as patroness of the Carmelites. On Mount Carmel in the 13th c they built a chapel to her amidst their hermitages, in medieval fuedal style she was “the Lady of the Place” and they her vassals. A little later, after the move to Europe and establishment of the Carmelites as a mendicant order of friars, all the mendicant religious orders formed traditions of Our Lady’s special care and protection, for the salvation of those who persevered in their vocation to the end, and for instance the Dominicans, the Order the Carmelites had the closest relationship with, had a touching story of Our Lady giving a white habit scapular to Blessed Reginald of Orleans, curing him also of an illness.
The subsequent Carmelite version first appears in a Dominican liturgical martyrology which seems to have drawn on a contemporary Dominican account of St Simon Stock being present when a Carmelite novice recounted to some Dominicans that he had been so distressed that God would allow the shipwreck death of the great Dominican Bl Jordan of Saxony, that he wanted to give up on his vocation, but then he had a vision of Bl Jordan saying to him that all who persevere in their vocation will be saved. That Dominican martyrology made this promise the content of Our Lady’s pledge in regards to their own Carmelite habit scapular, which, while not recounting a specific private revelation, has a certain logic since their habit was patterned after the Dominican one but in different color, brown with white mantle. And they were even more eminently “Our Lady’s Order,” being titled (controversially–it was disupted whether it was okay to style themselves Mary’s brothers) “Brothers of the Most Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel.” Later on, when lay people were affiliating themselves with these orders, elements of the habit, first the mantle but later the scapular, and a sharing in the spiritual benefits were conferred on the people.
In the time of St Teresa of Avila, the Master General of the Carmelites instituted the familiar form of the scapular devotion, as an approved form of the devotion which the Holy See had intervened in regards to, due to an apparently forged and unapproved “papal bull” which some Carmelites had been using to promote the idea that according to a Papal vision, Our Lady would release brown scapular wearers from purgatory on the Saturday after their death. The term “Sabbatine Privilege,” originally applied to this false form of the devotion which the Carmelites were asked to stop promoting, has confusingly continued to be popularly associated with the approved form, which if I recall correctly does say the Carmelites may teach that one may trust that Our Lady will pray and intervene especially for scapular wearers after their death, especially on Saturdays, the day particularly devoted to her. There were various conditions of basic Catholic practice and praying the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin.
More recently there has been some helpful clarification and changes (as with indulgences, the Church has a right to change these things, and holds that the Carmelites have a right to define the form of devotion to their habit) in regards to this devotion. There is also a needed clarification that the Confraternity of the Brown Scapular is an actual canonical association of the faithful, of which most scapular wearers are not members unless they join a specific local chapter canonically erected by the Carmelite Order, and there is now a form of the Blessing and Investiture of the Scapular that does not imply the person is joining this organization. The new form is approved by the CDWDS and is stated to supercede the old one; whether one likes the new version or not, the old version is not entirely fitting because it purports to join you to the Confraternity which is not actually true. There are no indulgences for most scapular wearers, unless they are part of the actual Confraternity organization which IS in fact granted the opportunity of plenary indulgences on certain days. There are also no obligatory prayers or practices for most scapular wearers, the person who wears this small version of the Carmelite habit is supposed to practice the spirituality of the Carmelite Order, particularly devotion to Our Lady and to the Eucharist.
There are two kinds of Catholics, those who see the Brown Scapular devotion as subject to logical reasoning, and acknowledge that it is mediated by the Church and the Carmelites, and those who find the kinds of things I have said above perfectly maddening and a product of loss of faith and modernist destruction of traditional devotional practices that really help people, and consider that understanding the Brown Scapular as really being from Our Lady means it comes right from heaven to them and means whatever old pamphlets say it means.
Ugh, the Vierne “Mess”. Kyrie: “Lord, have mercy…or else!”
Louis Vierne had an interesting life, but he also had an equally interesting death. On June 2, 1937, he was giving a concert at Notre-Dame and had just prepared the stops to commence an improvisation. Suddenly, he fell forward and fell off the bench. He had suffered a heart attack or a stroke. As he fell off the bench, his foot hit the lowest “E” on the pedalboard. Before the note died away, Vierne had lost consciousness and died very soon thereafter. That was how he wanted to die, at the console of his beloved organ.
Elizabeth D:
In reading your statement that many people wearing the scapular believe they are receiving benefits/graces but are not, are you making the distinction between being formally enrolled in the confraternity by a Carmelite priest , having signed the register (as in 21 years ago), as opposed to a parish priest who gives a blessing as one would a rosary before use? If so, can you please provide me with a link to the new rules because I can’t find anything other than supportive information as to the manner in which I was enrolled and made a member of the confraternity.
I do understand that in the past only a Carmelite could conduct the enrollment together with the investing of the scapular, but since about 2,000 any priest, Diocesan or otherwise, can bless the scapular and wearer, however the recipient is not registered with the Carmelites. I did find current information regarding the current practice as of the 2013 Chapter Meeting of the Order of Carmelites and it does not agree with what you have stated.
http://ocarm.org/en/content/ocarm/confraternities
When I was enrolled, invested and registered (and we all had to sign our names and provide addresses) I was informed of the requirement to pray the little office daily or could substitute five decades of the Rosary, as well as the other requirements as stated in the link above. In short, all the sorts of things most devout Catholics perform anyway. You are correct in stating that the Church, as well as the Carmelite Order, may clarify the understanding and nature of indulgences attached to the scapular confraternity, but I don’t find anywhere that it has been done away with, at least not as far as the Carmelites are concerned as of this year. I might add that this enrollment in our Carmelite served parish was a good introduction to the Third Order of Carmelites, which a number of people went on to join.
There is also a Pontifical TLM at the Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Elysburg, PA today at 5:30 pm. Pittsburgh Auxiliary Bishop William Waltersheid will be pontificate.
Three days earlier, on the feast of St. Teresa de los Andes, a young woman entered that Carmel. A close friend of hers wrote a beautiful account about the occasion: Entrance Day: Channing Dale Ascends Mount Carmel
On this her feast day, may Our Lady of Mount Carmel enfold Fr. Z and all his readers in the mantle of her love.
Jeannie_C the current factual, ecclesiastically approved information that I cite is from this booklet by the Carmelites of North America: http://www.icspublications.org/bookstore/others/b_others13.html
Pretty much the complete contents of this are found online, though not all in the same place. They are:
An introductory pastoral note that appears in the booklet is online at this link: http://www.carmelites.ie/citw20041.html
the next portion of the book is in this PDF:
http://thereseocds.org/uploads/MessagefromProvinces.pdf
The Doctrinal Statement on the Brown Scapular, which is approved by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (approved in 1996), which includes at the end “practical norms for the Scapular Confraternity”:
http://thereseocds.org/uploads/DoctrinalStatement.pdf
The current, correct, ecclesiastically approved form of the Rite of Blessing and Enrolment of the Brown Scapular is here:
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/prayers/view.cfm?id=1086
The booklet concludes with the Message of Pope John Paul II to the Carmelite family (2001):
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2001/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20010326_ordine-carmelo_en.html
I am a little confused. Be careful to check the whens and the wheres of the celebrations.
Newark, NJ is the seat of Archbishop Myers who permits a number of TLMs including St. Anthony of Padua (Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest).
Bishop Serratelli is the Ordinary of the Diocese of Paterson, neighboring Newark, and also permits the TLM. The Chapel of Our Lady of Fatima (FSSP) is located there in Pequannock where he, at least once, celebrated a Papal Mass.
Elizabeth D:
Thank you for the links – I’ll read through them. I always had difficulty accepting the claims to the Sabbatine Privilege as it pertained to the Carmelite scapular in that it seemed to me only our Lord would determine the length of time spent in purgatory, or worse yet, hell. While Our Lady can pray with and for us, the final word isn’t hers. I think I’d have to say I don’t fall into the second category of Catholics you describe, but see the scapular in the same light as the rosary, something I make use of as it centers me in prayer. I don’t believe my salvation ultimately depends on dying with a scapular/medal positioned on my body, rather the timing of my most recent confession would be a bigger concern. Happy feast day!
I did not go, but it must have been hot hot hot outside for the procession! Newark typically gets among the highest temps in New Jersey.
Wonderful! There was also a Solemn Pontifical Mass (EF) at the Carmel of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in Valparaiso, NE celebrated by Bishop Conley (Lincoln diocese) yesterday. My son had the privilege of being one of the servers. It was standing room only!
Hubby and I attended. Yes, it was HE Arthur Serratelli, Bishop of Paterson. There were no FSSP priests there that I saw. There were A LOT of the Holy Innocents regulars. The music was stunning. There was an old couple behind me and the man felt it necessary to make “ahhhh, ahhhh” sounds during the singing, despite his wife’s pleas to stop. I would have been more upset about it but my Guardian Angel told me that this woman takes care of him all week and really needed to be there for the graces. There was the usual confusion among the novus ordites as to when to sit, stand and kneel.
After the homily and before the Creed the Bishop received the initial vows of a seminarian. Just beautiful.
There was a 45 minute break between Mass and procession. There were stops along the way. One of the homeowners provided sandwiches, watermelon and water. We had another 45 minutes left to process when my husband directed me to a nearby tavern for a tall tap Heinekin. We went back to the car and went home. It was really hot!!
The whole day was amazing. We live about 30 minutes from Newark and we got home around 5.
BigRed, both your information and the information about the Mass above are accurate. Bishops do celebrate Mass outside of their own diocese. In this case, H.E. Bishop Serratelli was a priest and auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark before being appointed Bishop of Paterson. As mentioned in the announcement, the bishop was returning to his home parish. In fact, the last time a pontifical Mass had been celebrated at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Bishop Serratelli was an altar boy at that Mass.
NoraLee9, in addition to regulars from Holy Innocents, there were regulars from St. Anthony’s Oratory in W. Orange, Holy Rosary Church in Jersey City as well as at least one parishioner from St. Mary’s in Norwalk, CT who has already posted wonderful photos from the Mass. Are you a regular at Holy Innocents?