St. Mary Church in Greenwich, CT will be holding its annual novena in preparation for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. This year, the pastor Fr. La Pastina has invited recently ordained priests to offer reflections on devotion to Our Lady according to various saints.

The first night of the novena is this Thursday, November 30.

Father Timothy Iannacone

Father Sean Connolly

Father Jon Tveit

With “Lux Fulgebit: The Mass at Dawn of Christmas Day,” the St. Mary’s Schola Cantorum has produced a world-premiere, professional recording of a lost treasure from our Catholic Tradition. The sixteenth-century Mass Christe Jesu by the little known composer William Rasar, “a unique work of the highest musical quality” (Early Music Review), affords a rare perspective on the religious world of early modern England, and the spiritual performance by the Schola brings the enduring power of this music home to the contemporary Church. The liturgical structure of the recording, beginning as it does with the Gregorian Introit and ending with the singing of the Ite Missa est and an organ improvisation, provides natural relief to the stunning beauty of Rasar’s setting of the Mass Ordinary. Motets by Ferrabosco, Byrd, and Lambe keep with both the English Renaissance and the Christmas themes of the recording.

Over the past decade, the St. Mary’s Schola Cantorum has undertaken a monumental effort of restoration, bringing back to life countless old masterpieces on a weekly basis. This remarkable commitment to recovering our Catholic heritage in sacred music is totally self-funded by parishioners and supporters of the St. Cecilia Society of St. Mary’s Church. All proceeds of the sale of the CD will go toward the continuation of this important work.

In honor of the Society’s patroness, a special sale price of $15 plus shipping per disc is being offered through November 28th. This is the perfect Christmas gift for friends and family, not least for someone who is estranged from the Church or unfamiliar with the Traditional liturgy. For more information and to order online, please visit HERE.

As this recent display attests, the Bookstore of St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT is well-stocked with Advent and Christmas presents for adults and children, as well as an excellent selection of Catholic books—perhaps the best in the area.  Also Catholic greeting cards, statues, medals and scapulars.  It’s worth the trip.
The bookstore is located in the school building, with plenty of parking.
The hours:
(closed on Holy Days of Obligation and Holidays)
Sunday: 9:00-9:30 AM, 11:00AM – 2:00PM
Monday: 12:45PM – 3:45PM
Tuesday: 12:45PM – 3:45PM
Wednesday: 12:45PM – 3:45PM
Thursday: 12:45PM – 3:45PM
Friday: Closed
Saturday: 10:00AM – 2:00PM
phone number: (203) 854-9013

Saturday, December 16,
Rorate Mass in honor of Our Lady, St. Mary Church, Greenwich, CT, 6:30 am.
Rorate Mass in honor of Our Lady, St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT, 6:30 am.
Rorate Mass in honor of Our Lady, St. Anthony of Padua Church, Jersey City, 6 am, information

Monday, December 18,  Sung Requiem Mass, Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, NY, 7 pm. Sponsored by the NY Purgatorial Society

Wednesday, December 20, Missa cantata for the Ember Wednesday of Advent,  St. Mary Church, Norwalk, 6:00 p.m

Monday, December 25th, schedule

Wednesday, December 27, Missa cantata for St. John the Evangelist, St. Mary Church, Norwalk, 6:00 p.m

A special thanks for Jim Morlino for creating this video.

See our photos of this Mass: link

by Father Richard Cipolla

Once again we hear from the highest circles of power in the Church of the possibility of ordaining married men to the priesthood. But this time, what is being talked about is not men in “special circumstances” but in general. I was able and gratuitously blessed to be ordained a Catholic priest while married because of a special Pastoral Provision instituted by Saint John Paul II in 1982 that gave permission for married Episcopal priests who had left the Episcopal Church because of reasons of conscience to be considered for the Catholic priesthood.  For me these reasons for leaving Anglicanism included the ordination of women priests and women bishops and the rapidly accelerating cutting of ties to Christian orthodoxy. The recent formation of the Anglican Ordinariate is the result of a similar situation where Anglican priests who want to be in full Communion with the Catholic Church are given this special privilege and grace.

But what is being contemplated now at the highest levels of the Church is to allow married priests as a general rule. Those who are pushing this say they are doing so because of the severe shortage of priests in certain areas of the world, i.e. those areas associated with the “West”.  Of course, they never ask the question of why there are so few men being called to the priesthood (except those who have a love of the Tradition). So their solution is to ordain “viri probati”, married men who are good examples of what it means to be a Catholic man. In this pontificate one must be cautious about reacting negatively to every trial balloon that rises over Casa Santa Marta. But this trial balloon if blossomed into a luxury aircraft would open up the priesthood to a radical reformulation that would deny the understanding of the priesthood in Catholic Tradition.

It is certainly true that St Peter was married. The Gospels tell us about the healing of his mother-in-law. But that certainly is no basis for an abandonment of the celibate priesthood. We never hear about Peter’s wife or family. It is not a part of the Gospel message. We do know that Peter abandoned everything and became a “fisher of men”. Priestly celibacy is part of the development of the doctrine of the priesthood, a development that begins as early as the fourth century in the West. It is also true that priestly celibacy was not always enforced in the history of the Church, but priests living with women and fathering children was never understood as the norm or ideal. Nor did this situation lead to a rethinking of clerical celibacy. In fact the great reformers of the Church of every age did all that they could to enforce clerical celibacy, and they did so because of celibacy’s relationship to the celibacy of Christ himself, and specifically to Christ as the High Priest. Although married men are allowed to be priests in the Eastern Churches, their situation is quite different from the Catholic priest. And, significantly, both in the East and West, all bishops, who have the fullness of priesthood, are required to be celibate.

Those who are advocating this change have little experience in living a typical and normal life as husband and father. They are part of a clerical system that lives in an unreal world, where celibacy is lived as being “unmarried” and gives one freedom to do what one wants to do when wants to do it and have too many long dinners on the Borgo Pio. That behavior is impossible in a marriage. There is no doubt that this call for married priests is a result, at least partially, of the deliberate misunderstanding of what “priest” means. And this misunderstanding is one of the results of fifty years of the Mass of Paul VI and how it is commonly celebrated that has made our people forget that the heart of the priesthood is to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, that he stands there in persona Christi, in the person of Christ himself, to offer up the Sacrifice of the Cross that is re-presented at every Mass. It is no accident that the post-Vatican II terminology for the one who celebrates Mass is not priest but rather “celebrant” or “officiant” or that awful Orwellian word “presider”. Cardinal Sarah said recently that he believes that the great majority of priests and bishops have forgotten or do not know that the Mass is a Sacrifice, in and of itself, and that the function of the priest, is to offer that Sacrifice. Now this does not mean that a married man cannot offer the Sacrifice. But what it does mean is that the Tradition of celibate priests is consonant in the deepest way with the person of Christ who offered Himself totally and completely on the Cross.

But what is even more disturbing about this latest trial balloon, which may morph into a gas filled dirigible( would that it met the fate of the Hindenberg without loss of life!), is that it seems that the ‘60s gang who caused so much damage to the Church in the liturgy and the priesthood are hell bent on becoming like the main stream Protestant denominations that have abandoned orthodox Christianity in favor of a “live and let live” attitude covered by a veneer of religiosity. There is no direct link between allowing “viri probati” to be ordained priests and allowing women priests and women bishops and a reversal of Humane Vitae and a further degradation of the liturgy. But they lie on the same trajectory, and this is what must be cause for great concern for those who love the Church of Jesus Christ.

The hatred of the Traditional Roman Mass by the current builders of balloons is completely understandable, quite apart from their abundant fount of hot air. For it is the Traditional Mass that embodies the Tradition of the Church and that exposes for all to see that the emperor has no clothes. The Church today is living in Alice’s Wonderland where the Queen of Hearts can order the white roses painted red and declare by fiat that they are red roses. The current hierarchy are fed on a positivism that has nothing to do with the freedom bought on the Cross by Jesus Christ and so are powerless to oppose either the beast that slouches to Bethlehem or Robert Hugh Benson’s machines of destruction in “Lord of the World” whose goal is to destroy the Catholic Church.

But don’t get too excited and don’t get worried. Sit back and enjoy the show. For the gates of hell will not prevail. But what if hell does not exist, as some princes of the Church say?

Regina Pacis Academy, an independent Catholic K-8 school in Norwalk, CT, will be holding an open house this Sunday, November 12 from 1 pm to 6 pm. The school is located on the grounds of St. Mary Church at 8 Leonard Street. Students have the opportunity to attend traditional Low Mass every morning at the church.

Interested parents may also contact Mrs. Kim Quatela, the school principal to schedule a tour or learn more. The school website: https://www.reginapacisacademy.com

Third and fourth graders perform at the recent visit of Bishop Athanasius Schneider to the school