St Agnes Traditional Mass R.I.P.

We have received a report from Arrys Ortanez that the last Traditional Mass in St Agnes Church, New York, was celebrated today. I have not found any published announcement of this in the pages of the St. Agnes parish bulletin – amid that publication’s incessant appeals for money – although mention of the traditional Mass had disappeared from the Mass schedule early this year. I am not at all surprised – in recent years there had been repeated conflicts between the Latin Mass congregation and St. Agnes pastors on a variety of fronts. Certainly the transfer of the parish to Opus Dei in 2016 did not bode well for the long-term prospects of the Latin Mass given that organization’s well known hostility to Traditionalists.

Still, it is a sad event. St. Agnes saw the institution in January 1989 of one of the first regular traditional Masses in the New York Archdiocese after the promulgation of the 1988 Indult. This was in the old church, subsequently destroyed by fire. It also was at a time when a remarkable group of priests led by Monsignor Eugene V. Clark operated out of the St Agnes Rectory.

I took my mother to the first – or at least one of the very first – traditional Mass at St Agnes. She was impressed at how many former altar servers were present in the congregation, hearing the audible recitation by so many of the responses. ( I now think that was really because some in the pews were following the practice of the “dialogue Mass” they dimly remembered.) And that Mass continued until this very year, a welcome spiritual resource for so many people. And so many important Masses were celebrated here! – a search of our St. Hugh of Cluny site brings up dozens of posts. The loss of the traditional Mass at St. Agnes is a tragedy, for it was the last relic of a great era of this parish.