The Basilica of St. John the Evangelist will offer a Solemn Mass on September 14 to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Cross.

Agnus Dei Knights of Columbus Council has scheduled it’s annual Men’s Retreat with Fr. John Perricone at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, L.I. the weekend of November 12 – 14, 2021. 

If you are interested in attending, please get in touch with Dan Marengo: danmarengo@aol.com.

…on the Latin Mass. And quite favorable to it! The article is unusually well informed and feautures a photograph of the congegation of St. Josaphat’s. Queens! Our author also relies on the witness of a number of people who have been involved in the Traditional Mass in our (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut) region in various capacities: not just in the congregation but also in the schola. Indeed, these individuals have partcipated in and to a great extent made possible many events sponsored by the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny.

The Power of the Latin Mass

My one critique would be that the article tends to focus on externals, the subjective experiences of individuals and nonessential customs (like the use of veils by women) and not the real reasons all this is happpening in the first place – at the cost of such great efforts by the Traditionalist Catholics over the years. Illustrating this problem, the article concludes with the opinions of a “liturgical expert,” Timothy O’Malley :

Some of the distinctive features of the Latin Mass can be applied to the new Mass, according to Timothy O’Malley, an expert on liturgy who teaches at the University of Notre Dame. He says that elements such as Gregorian chant have become more common since they were encouraged by Pope Benedict XVI. Whatever the fate of the Latin Mass, Mr. O’Malley predicts, celebrants of the new Mass will give renewed attention to “the material or aesthetic dimension of liturgical worship…symbols, images, materiality, processions, all the things that are integral to liturgy.”

This will be easier, he says, with the rise of a generation of priests for whom questions such as the use of Latin are no longer linked to ideological battles. The fight over the Latin Mass “is the last of the liturgy war fights that we’re going to have,” Mr. O’Malley said.

So elements of the Traditonal Mass can be “tacked on” to the Novus Ordo. But this has been happening since the beginnings of the New Mass without any gaining any traction. And hasn’t Pope Francis also expressly condemned the “reform of the reform” of the Novus Ordo? Indeed, the very word (“ROTR”) cannot be used! As Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston decreed on September 1:

“The rubrics of the Roman Missal of 1962 are not to be added to the celebration of Mass according to the current edition of the Roman Missal of 1970.” 1)

Pope Francis has recently launched a super-ideological struggle against the Latin Mass – in such a context, it’s hard to see how “the use of Latin (will) no longer (be) linked to ideological battles.” And, as a matter of principle, how will celebrants of the New Mass give renewed attention to “the material or aesthetic dimension of liturgical worship…symbols, images, materiality, processions, all the things that are integral to liturgy” when the entire sense of the New Mass is a denial of this dimension, its symbols and images? As was so eloquently described in Alfred Lorenzer’s Das Konzil der Buchhalter – already in 1981.

1. Traditional Latin Masses to end in some Houston parishes but continue in others, Cardinal DiNardo says

This music program will be led by Charlie and Elizabeth Weaver.

For more information and to register, go to https://www.stmarynorwalk.net/childrens-schola-program/

I was saddened to hear that Alex Šepkus had passed away last Sunday. Born in 1954, he emigrated from Lithuania in 1988 and quickly became a major creative force in jewelry design. Alex Šepkus was always a staunch supporter of the Traditional rite, and in the New York area he was a familiar face among Traditionalists. He was a member and supporter of this Society, and could often be encountered at our masses and events. Indeed, his death came as a particular surprise to us in the Society since just on August 21 he had corresponded with me about a recent post on this blog. Alex Šepkus was a founding member of the Sleepy Hollow Chorale. Undoubtedly a true artist like Alex Šepkus had a special appreciation for the beauty of the Old Rite. May he rest in peace! Our deepest condolences to his wife, Dangė.

Above: Alex Šepkus(second from left in background) singing in the schola at a Solemn mass at Holy Innocents Church, New York, on March 25, 2010. The Mass was in the presence of the late Cardinal Egan. Below: Alex Šepkus(in the back, standing, third from left) singing at the Roman Forum conference in Huntington, Long Island on June 30, 2021. Alex was one of the many in the Catholic Traditionalist movement who express and deepen their faith by their “active participation” in scholae and choirs.

The wake will be held Saturday, September 11th and Sunday, September 12th from 4pm-7pm, Coffey Funeral Home, 91 North Broadway,Tarrytown, NY 10591(914.631.0983).

The 90-minute funeral services will be held on Monday, September 13th at 11am at Immaculate Conception Church, 199 North Broadway, Sleepy Hollow, NY 10591(914.631.0446)

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By Fr. Richard Cipolla

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings. (2 Timothy: 3-4)

I have always loved this phrase “itching ears” in this passage from the Second Epistle to Timothy. These are those who hearing sound doctrine try to scratch what they are hearing because it interferes with what they want to hear, “to suit their own likings.”  That the Catholic Church is in a time of crisis no one can deny.  It is not the first time that the Church has been in crisis. Church history, which is not popular in a time of cancel culture, provides a good number of examples of crises that faced the Church.  The age of the Church Fathers in the first seven centuries was a critical time for the Church, for the Church had to counter doctrines that would have contradicted the truth about the person of Jesus Christ and the nature of the Holy Spirit.  The early Middle Ages had to confront false doctrine concerning the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  The Protestant Reformation was one of the greatest of the crises the Church has had to face.  And in the twentieth century Pope St Pius X had to confront the heresy of Modernism.  That heresy, because it takes so many forms, is still with us today.

There are several elements in the crisis within the Church today.  Many deal with the question of development of doctrine and how the Church should meet the challenges of a culture that is either uninterested in any form of religion or that is actively hostile to the teaching of the Catholic Church. But I believe that the deepest crisis facing the Church today is how the Church worships.  Lex orandi, lex credendi. How the Church prays is the foundation of what the Church believes.

This Mass today that we celebrate in this church is the Traditional Roman Mass, which was and still is at the very heart of the Tradition of the Catholic Church.  And this Mass today is made possible by the group known as the St. Gregory Society. founded in 1985 to promote the local celebration of the Traditional Latin Liturgy according to the Tridentine Missal in response to the Papal indult of October 3, 1984.  Many of us here are indebted to the Society for having the courage and faith to begin the restoration of the Traditional Roman Mass to its rightful place in the Church after the imposition of the Novus Ordo Mass on the Church by Pope St Paul VI in the name of the Second Vatican Council.  Without the St. Gregory Society you would not be here today.  Without the St. Gregory Society I would not be here today.  The most important day in my almost 38 years as a Catholic priest was the first time I celebrated Solemn Mass in Sacred Heart church in this city, a parish which no longer exists.  It was at that Mass that I discovered the beauty and reverence of Catholic worship. It was at the Mass that I experienced for the first time in my priesthood the very heart of the Tradition of the Catholic Church.  And I have never looked back.  

The greatest crisis facing the Church today is the crisis of worship. Pope Benedict understood this deeply and tried to address the crisis in his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.  That act resulted in the discovery of the Traditional Mass by many Catholics, both lay and priests.  Those of us who know the young priests and seminarians know of their interest in and love for the Traditional Mass.  This, for those in the hierarchy who are committed to the Novus Ordo Mass – as what is called in Traditionis Custodes(irony of all irony) the ONLY form of the Roman Mass—this is a problem.  And this latest Motu Proprio from Pope Francis, severely limiting the freedom to celebrate the Traditional Mass, is the answer of those who are blind to the disastrous situation where regular Mass attendance is below 20% in most of this country, and far below that in Europe.  They claim that those returning to the Traditional Mass are denying the validity of the Second Vatican Council that asked for liturgical reform and renewal.  Unfortunately, there are those who champion the Traditional Mass and who say nonsensical and blanket denunciations of Vatican II. That must stop, my friends.  The Second Vatican Council is like all Councils.  Most of what was said at Lateran II has been forgotten.  What needed to be said has been remembered and has become a part of the development of doctrine.  Our job is neither to be nostalgic about the past nor is it to condemn Councils. Our job is to allow more and more Catholics to discover the beauty and depth of the Traditional Mass, and to do so with a smile.  

As more and more scholarship is applied to the Novus Ordo form of Mass, it is becoming more and more evident that there is indeed a discontinuity between the Traditional Roman Mass and the Novus Ordo Mass.  One scholar opines that only 36% of the 1962 Missal was preserved intact in the Roman Missal of 1970. If I decided to do a new edition of David Copperfield and eliminated 60% of what Charles Dickens wrote and added chapters of my own making, would it be honest or possible to still call it David Copperfield? But let us be clear: there is no question of the validity of the Mass of Paul VI. And there should be no question of the rightful place of the Traditional Mass now and in the future.  

This is why the St. Gregory Society is so very important today.  It not only must continue doing what it has always done. But it must also realize that these are different times.  We must no longer be content to have Masses on Sunday afternoon in a parish church that will allow us to celebrate this Mass.  We must work for a permanent home in which the Mass can be celebrated in all of its beauty and truth.  We must maintain a high standard  in all that pertains to the Mass, including the music of Catholic Tradition, the training of servers, and yes even the priests who celebrate the Mass.  This is not a time for negativity, not a time for looking back, not a time for discouragement.  This is a time for joyful evangelization, with the emphasis on joy.  This is a time to get Yale students, many of whom have been totally secularized, to come and see and to experience something that they will never be exposed to at a university that has turned its back on its Christian origins.  This is a time to invite family and friends to this Mass, a time to do whatever we can not merely to make this Mass survive but primarily to help to make Catholics once again understand who and what are at the heart of Catholic Traditional: the person of Jesus Christ and the beauty and truth of the Sacrifice of the Cross.