On Monday, July 20, a Solemn Requiem Mass was celebrated at St. Mary’s, Norwalk, on the anniversary of the death of Fr. Keven. P. Fitzpatrick, a devoted friend of the Traditional liturgy.

This evening a Missa Cantata was celebrated at St. Gabriel’s, Stamford in honor of Our Lady of Mt Carmel. The pastor, Fr. Cyprian LaPastina, was the celebrant and deacon Aaron Huberfeld of the Institute of Christ the King preached. It was instructive to experience how effective the Traditional liturgy can be in the more intimate setting of this church. Those familiar with this church will note that the sanctuary can be adapted for both the Traditional and Novus Ordo masses. Some aspects of this ceremony might raise eyebrows among liturgical purists. For example, to simply read the epistle and gospel in English (on shaky authority)while surrounding them with Latin chant downgrades the liturgical and aesthetic impact of the readings. And it seems questionable to chant a hymn during the reading of the last gospel. Nevertheless, it was an impressive start (or rather restarting) of the celebration of the Traditional Mass at this parish.

The new, classical chapel. Another impressive addition by the pastor to an ungainly building that was a originally a gymnasium.

Our friends of the St. Gregory Society sent the following announcement:

We are pleased to inform you of wonderful news. Thanks to the good offices of The Most Reverend Henry J. Mansell, Archbishop of Hartford, the Latin Mass will soon have a new home at St. Stanislaus Church in central New Haven.

As many of our members and friends have known for some time, New Haven’s Sacred Heart Church, which has been the home of the traditional Latin Masses celebrated for our Society since its inception in 1985, is scheduled to close in the very near future. We take this opportunity to express our deepest thanks to The Reverend James Richardson and the Parish of Sacred Heart Church for twenty-four years of hospitality and support. We express our special gratitude to Fr. Richardson for his willingness in recent years to celebrate the old Mass, often at but a moment’s notice, to ensure the stability of our schedule. We would be remiss if we did not offer our sincere thanks to Frs. Robert Newman, James Smith and Robert Ladish, who were brave pastors in making Sacred Heart Church available for the celebration of the old liturgy before its recent, more widespread acceptance. Our gratitude to them can never be fully expressed.

Aware that the closure of Sacred Heart Church is imminent, the Officers of the Society wrote to the Most Reverend Henry J. Mansell, Archbishop of Harford, late in the spring expressing the concern that when the church closed, the members and friends of the Society who have faithfully attended the Latin Masses there would be without a home. In his gracious response dated 23 June, Archbishop Mansell explained that he had consulted with clergy in the New Haven Deanery, and that The Reverend Roman Kmiec, C.M., pastor of St. Stanislaus Church in New Haven, had offered his church as a new home for the Latin Mass in our community.

The Co-chairmen and Vice-chairman of the Society met with Fr. Kmiec on 10 July. After a discussion of the history of the Society and an examination of the church with regard to its suitability for the celebration of the old liturgy, Fr. Kmiec extended his generous invitation to the Society to make St. Stanislaus its new home. We accepted without hesitation since the opportunity presents so many benefits to the life of our group.

Located close to the center of New Haven at the intersection of State and Eld Streets, St. Stanislaus is an imposing edifice in the Baroque style, whose construction was begun in 1901 by Polish craftsmen and artisans from the old country. Served by priests of the Congregatio Missionis, founded by St. Vincent de Paul in 1625 (commonly known as the Vincentians), the people of St. Stanislaus are strongly traditional in Catholic faith and practice, a number of them desirous of the return of the older liturgy to their parish. The beautifully decorated church interior remains essentially the same since the day of its consecration and thus ideally suited for the celebration of the traditional rites.

Relocation will require considerable planning and hard work on the part of the Society’s Executive Committee and our members. With Fr. Kmiec we agreed on September 13 as the date on which the first Latin Mass will be celebrated at St. Stanislaus. Falling on the eve of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14th) this date is most appropriate, since it is the second anniversary of the implementation of Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. So we are pleased to announce a festive celebration of that feast with Solemn Mass and Benediction on Sunday, 13 September at 2:00 pm. We exhort our members and friends to mark this date on their calendars, to plan to attend the service with family and friends, and to offer prayers of thanksgiving for what promises to be a stimulus for an exhilarating new era in the life of the Saint Gregory Society.

photo courtesy of the St. Gregory Society

Fr. G. Fluet will be offering a low Mass in the Extraordinary Form at Saint Bridget of Kildare in Moodus on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel July 16 at 7:30 AM (morning).

There will be a Solemn High Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel at St. Gabriel Church in Stamford, CT on Thursday, July 16th at 7:30 pm.
Deacon Aaron Huberfeld of the Institute of Christ the King will preach, and the music will be conducted by Scott Turkington. St. Gabriel Church is located at 914 Newfield Ave.

There will be a Solemn High Mass at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, 259 Oliver St., Newark, NJ, in honor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, at 12pm Noon, Thursday, July 16th. Monsignor Joseph Ambrosio will be the celebrant.
A procession will follow with Italian marching band through the streets of the Ironbound district with house visits. The phone number of the church is 973-589-2090.

There will be a celebration of the Extraordinary Rite of Holy Mass on Thursday, July 16th for the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church on 627 East 187th Street, Bronx, New York at 7:30pm. Fr. Nikolin Pergjini will be the celebrant. It will be a sung Mass [Missa Cantata.] For more information please contact the church at (718 ) 295-3770. After Mass celebrate the feast day at the church’s annual outdoor festival with good food and drink!

PLEASE LET US KNOW OF OTHER TRADITIONAL MASSES ON THIS FEAST!

On Sunday, June 28, Mr.Christopher Check addressed a large audience AT St. Mary’s parish Norwalk on the Knights Templar: their origin, life rule and ultimate demise. Mr. Check is executive vice president of the Rockford institute, the publisher of Chronicles magazine – a publication with which every thinking Catholic should become familiar. His lecture was doubly interesting in that was not an account of stirring battles but rather concentrated the historical and theological basis fro the foundation of the order, its rule and its tragic end. Yet as portrayed by the speaker the story was as engrossing as any tale of action or adventure. Mr. Check was obviously – and quite correctly – an advocate of the rightness of the soldier-monk concept and of Crusading in general. The destruction of the Templars was fro him an act of villainy and cowardice. I am not so sure I can follow the speaker totally here. Nor was there discussion of recent contrary views (such as those of John Paul II) on the subject of taking up arms for Christ. But it was an overwhelmingly impressive presentation of an often misrepresented aspect of the past for which Catholics today should be proud.

The blog Vultus Christi on the feast of the holy abbots of Cluny (including St Hugh):

http://vultus.stblogs.org/2009/05/holy-abbots-of-cluny.html

From “Athanasius” by Joseph Goerres(G. Joseph Manz, Regensburg 1838) – On the situation of the clergy of the Catholic Church in Germany from around 1780 to 1810:

That so many collaborators (in the work of separating the German Catholic Church from Rome and subjecting her to secular authority – Trans.) were found among the clergy made manifest a deeply rooted and widespread evil. An evil that had been running rampant not just since yesterday and which affords a saddening and depressing phenomenon that Justice will not permit to be passed over in silence. It can neither be hidden nor denied that many members of this clergy even in the immediately preceding times and before the start of this period’s upheavals had surrendered to an ever increasing slackness – both en masse in many of its noblest institutions and individually in many of its representatives. This led even then to the following. Just as the clergy heedlessly went in and out of cathedrals that the zeal of their fathers had built for their faith; just as they considered as only old junk the images with which their fathers’ artistic hand had decorated the interior of those churches, so did they have hardly an inkling any more of the rich treasure which they had been called to guard and hand down. By the side of a dying generation that sought to preserve the last remnants of the old living Tradition with the earlier seriousness and the ancient rigor there arose a new generation that minimized those remnants. They talked themselves into believing that the earnestness previously directed to Tradition was sinister monkery, that strictness was just useless troubling of oneself. Declaring both no longer appropriate for the times, they sought all kind of compromises with the age.

Protestantism stood before them as a shining exemplar: one only had to imitate it in order to rejuvenate antiquated circumstances in a quick transformation. They commenced a work, which in the beginning, regardless of its essence, still had to be carried out within the bounds of propriety and honor. First, they proceeded against dogma. This dealt with so many things the understanding of which had been lost in the increasing shallowness of the age. Now, it was declared incomprehensible and as such expelled from the domain of the only things worth knowing. (…) The ancient doctrine had poured its inner richness into a mass of such formalities, which also formed a barrier against the world. Now, however, as along with the inner nucleus the extremities grew cold, these too were given up, and, when advisable, eliminated as superfluous. Thus, after the tall castle in the center had been evacuated the outer ramparts found themselves abandoned. Doctrine was limited to the middle ground, to the active life and completely secularized by this simplistic limitation.

They proceeded in the same way against discipline. Here too the sense for the importance of asceticism had totally disappeared. The conviction of its unavoidable necessity for the cleric had been completely lost. The ancient rigor thus appeared as only an unforgivable harshness against nature, which like every exaggeration led, instead of to its goal, to the revolt of the one so maltreated. Thus, they were inclined everywhere to liberate oppressed nature; everywhere the tightly drawn bonds of discipline were loosened and in part broken. At the same time even in public services, the old multi-folded toga had to yield to the comfortable chlamys. This spread from the practice of individuals to that of institutions. The rules of the orders and the traditions were relaxed everywhere throughout every rank of the clerical estate. Lax observance was introduced everywhere in place of the strict. Soon the offspring were brought up in it in the seminaries….

(pp. 119-121, my translation)

“Athanasius” was Joseph Goerres’ powerful defense of the archbishop of Cologne, who had been persecuted by the Prussian state for defending Catholic marriage. His description of the German clergy of the enlightenment may strike a familiar note for contemporary readers, especially after some recent events in that country and Austria.

Fr. G. Fluet will be offering a low Mass in the Extraordinary Form at Saint Bridget of Kildare in Moodus on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel July 16 at 7:30 AM (morning).

The Society will be sponsoring a sung mass and address by Fr.U.M. Lang at St. Mary’s Norwalk on Wednesday, August 19. The mass will begin at 7:00 PM. We will provide further details of Fr. Lang’s lecture and of the mas shortly. Most of us remember Fr. Lang’s informative presentation he gave when he visited the New York area with Martin Mosebach in the fall of 2007.

The setting: one of the most sumptuous churches in New York. With an extraordinary altar designed for the devotion of Perpetual Adoration originally promoted by the founding order (the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament).

The very large church was full….

The Procession.

At the altar.

The incensation of the altar.

Before the Gospel.

The Sermon.

At the Creed.

The magnificent vestments – which I understand belong to this church.

Domine non sum dignus…