St. Mary’s Youth Schola Registration is open for Spring 2025
First meeting: Thursday, February 6, 2025 (4:00–5:30 p.m.)

A program of musical and faith formation based on Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony, with weekly classes on Thursday afternoons from 4:00–5:30 p.m., plus singing opportunities at parish Masses (2–4 per semester). Open to ages 8–18; young men with changed or changing voices are welcome!

Fee: $125/semester (multiple-child discounts available)
Faculty: Charles Weaver, Nicholas Botkins, Elizabeth Weaver

Find out more and register at: stmarynorwalk.net/youth-schola-program

By Marie Cabaud Meaney

(Marie Meaney has summarized for us the presentation she gave on November 9, 2024 for the St. Hugh of Cluny Society. SC)

Biographical Introduction

Simone Weil is not someone one might expect to hear about at a society centering on the liturgy. For this French philosopher was not a Catholic; she came from an agnostic, Jewish French family. Only in the aftermath of several mystical experiences did she come close to the Catholic Church (though she had already felt attracted to the liturgy earlier on). But she had
always had a great sense for beauty and its significance; and after encountering Christ, the supernatural became the focus of her thought. Hence, I believe she can teach us something about these matters.

In hindsight, she thought that she had always been Catholic de facto, if not de iure. For she shared the Catholic worldview, always sought the truth and the good, lived charity to a heroic degree, chose poverty, and embraced chastity. As she would come to see later on, she had loved God implicitly and obeyed His commands without knowing Him – thus proving Christ’s prediction that at the Last Judgment some who did not know Him will be surprised to sit at His right hand for having served Him.

For a long time, she had embraced agnosticism, believing that the human mind could not reach God. That God would descend to man came as a complete surprise to her in November 1938. It was when she was reciting George Herbert’s poem “Love” that “Christ came down and took her,” as she writes in her famous autobiographical 4th letter to Father Perrin (to be found in Waiting for God).

Though astonishing, this mystical encounter had been prepared in various ways. There were three “contacts” with Catholicism that truly mattered. During the academic year of 1934-5, she had taken time off from teaching to be employed among factory-assembly line workers to understand from the inside their working conditions. Attracted to Communism, she hadn’t kept
her concern for the oppressed on a purely theoretical plane but wanted to gain insights based on experience in order to find workable solutions (she would later criticize Communism scathingly). Given her bad health and natural clumsiness, the work on the assembly line was particularly
grueling for her. She came out of this experience, broken in body and soul. As she writes: “There I received forever the mark of a slave, like the branding of the red-hot iron the Romans put on the foreheads of their most despised slaves.” To recover, she went with her parents on a holiday
to Portugal in September 1935 where she witnessed a religious procession in a poor fishing-village, perhaps on the feast-day of Our Lady of Sorrows. The people were singing hymns of such “heart-rending sadness” that “there the conviction was suddenly borne in upon me that Christianity is pre-eminently the religion of slaves, that slaves cannot help belonging to it, and I among others,” as she explains. This was not a Nietzschean position about the weak resenting the strong and trying to control them through a restrictive morality, but rather the realization that Christianity recognizes suffering by showing affliction’s true face as Christ’s Passion.

In the Spring of 1937, she travelled to Italy, where, in Assisi, “alone in the little twelfth-century Romanesque chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, an incomparable marvel of beauty where Saint Francis often used to pray, something stronger than [her]self compelled [her] for the first time in [her] life to go down on [her] knees.” Though her kneeling-down was not yet prayer, it was a definite step in that direction, i.e. the implicit acknowledgement of someone infinitely holy and good calling for this posture of reverence.

A year later, in 1938, she spent Holy Week at the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes, which is famous for its wonderful liturgy and Gregorian chant. Non-believers were known to go there for the beauty of the liturgy. She writes: “I was suffering from splitting headaches; each sound hurt me like a blow; by an extreme effort of concentration, I was able to rise above this
wretched flesh, to leave it to suffer by itself, heaped up in a corner, and to find a pure and perfect joy in the unimaginable beauty of the chanting and the words. This experience enabled me by analogy to get a better understanding of the possibility of loving divine love in the midst of
affliction. It goes without saying that in the course of these services the thought of the Passion of Christ entered into my being once and for all.” That Christ’s Passion left its mark on her came through the liturgy and implies already a kind of union with Christ through the Cross.

There too, she was introduced to the Metaphysical Poets, and in particular to George Herbert’s poem “Love III” depicting a dialogue between the soul and God, ending on a Eucharistic note. She would recite it during her violent headaches, thinking it was merely a beautiful poem without realizing that it “had the virtue of a prayer.” As she succinctly states: “It
was during one of these recitations that… Christ himself came down and took possession of me.”

After this, everything changed and nothing changed. Everything changed in that she now knew that God existed; hence, the supernatural was going to become the main focus of her philosophy. Nothing changed in that she’d already led a highly moral life – so there was no moral turnaround. Nothing changed in that it didn’t lead her to engage in any steps towards the Catholic Church, nor did she start to pray. A mystic who doesn’t pray is a surprising combination, nay even seems like a contradiction in terms. But she was fearful of auto-suggestion and therefore resisted giving her intellectual assent to her experience for the sake of the truth, knowing that “if one turns away from him [Christ] in order to go towards the truth, it will not be long before one falls into his arms.”

But this changed, when she decided with Gustave Thibon in September 1941 to learn the “Our Father” by heart in Greek. Thibon was a thinker and gentleman farmer whom she met during her exile in the South of France, where she had fled from the Nazis with her parents to the unoccupied zone. Remembering her promise a few weeks later, she did so, reciting the prayer
from then on with the utmost attention at least once a day. Each time, she would have another mystical experience, where her spirit was transported beyond time and space, where she experienced a silence “which is more real than a sound,” and where “Christ is sometimes present in person.” And after having met the Dominican priest Joseph Marie Perrin in June 1941, who raised the question of baptism with her, she went to mass every Sunday, and often daily. Weil also frequently spent hours in Eucharistic Adoration.

The question of baptism haunted her for the rest of her short life. She left France with her parents for the US in May 1942, though she would have preferred to stay in France, to continue helping in the Resistance and suffering with the oppressed and persecuted. She applied for and
obtained a position in the Free French Government of General de Gaulle in London. She arrived in the UK at the end of 1942, but died on August 24th, 1943 from tuberculosis, overwork, exhaustion, and malnutrition. 1)

I will now turn to Weil’s reflections on beauty that are significant in and of themselves, but also in terms of their importance in the liturgy, even if she didn’t reflect much on the latter.

Beauty

Every time we experience authentic beauty, “there is a real presence of God,” Weil writes in her notebooks, for “it is like a kind of incarnation of God in the world of which beauty is the mark.” “Beauty is therefore nothing else but God who comes to seek man,” as she states in “God in Plato.” More precisely, the beauty of the world is that of God Himself, rendered graspable to the senses, while all other beauties are reflections.

When you ask people to define beauty, they have a very hard time doing so and will often say that it’s in the eye of the beholder and therefore purely subjective. Or they will state that the experience of beauty is due to a chemical reaction, such as hormones set in motion. But even
without a reductionist approach, one can find it difficult to capture it in words. It is not surprising therefore that “when one reflects on the beautiful, one is stopped as by a wall.” Weil therefore sternly states in her notebooks that “Everything that has been written on this is miserably and obviously insufficient, for this study needs to start with God,” for the simple reason that beauty is God. By taking Him out of the equation, one ends up doing injustice to it.

Beauty is “a reflection of the supernatural in the natural,” which doesn’t mean it exists disassociated from us (Prechristian Intuitions). For it occurs as a relationship between our senses and this world. It is meant to be enjoyed by human beings and even by all rational beings in the universe to whose sensory perception it is geared, is Weil’s claim. But beauty is real and of its own kind (sui generis). It cannot be explained by anything else but itself and is its own criterion.

Beauty as Sacrament

Yet beauty has an incomparable role to play. Weil even compares it to a sacrament, since it unites God and human beings. Without beauty, therefore, human beings would be lost. Those who have never experienced beauty “could perhaps reach God by no other means.”

Though there are a number of openings to the supernatural, “the beauty of the world is almost the only way through which one can let God penetrate” people’s lives in the West, as she writes in “Implicit Forms of the Love of God.” Yet, “the white race has almost lost its sensitivity towards the beauty of the world.” If it was bad in Weil’s day, one wonders what she would say
today.

But this sense of beauty, “even if mutilated, deformed, and sullied, remains indestructibly in the heart of man as a powerful motive.” If rendered “authentic and pure, it would transport in one fell swoop secular life at the feet of God” and make a “complete incarnation of faith” possible.

However, this isn’t easy, for it means abstaining from using beauty for one’s own gratification. Therefore, “only those can be saved,” she states in her notebooks, “that something compels to stop when they would like to approach that which they love, those in whom the sense of beauty has put contemplation.” This detachment is motivated by beauty itself, by the
realization that beauty is fragile, at least in this world, and can be destroyed and debauched. It implies a renunciation of one’s selfishness or a “decreation,” as Weil calls it, that comes down to a painful death to self.

Beauty and the Liturgy as Metaxu

Beauty is one of the metaxu, the bridges or “holes” in the fabric of our artificially secularized world, that lead to the supernatural. The supernatural is obviously not the demonic, but is “that other reality,” namely the absolute good which turns out to be the triune God, Love
itself.

It has its own laws that can be drawn up and are just as certain, if not more, than scientific laws. If someone directs all his attention and love towards the absolute good, then he will eventually perceive it; it will “descend upon him” and shine “through him upon all that surrounds him.” However, this will not happen primarily through perception or reason (though these can confirm it) but through the heart, of which Pascal already said that it “has its reasons which reason does not know.”

Another manner to get to “touch the supernatural,” another metaxu, is through the liturgy. In a time where people have lost their roots, the liturgy is key to give them back these roots, as Weil states in “Le christianisme et la vie des champs.” In “Human Personality,” she compares the human person to a tree that has roots both in the sky (the supernatural) and in the earth (their culture, traditions, and history) that have so often been lost through industrialization and secularization. The supernatural is often accessed through those cultural roots: through customs, art, literature, architecture. But when these have disappeared, been disfigured, or remain
inaccessible, then the supernatural in the form of the liturgy becomes even more essential in helping people grow these roots again (though Weil mainly thinks of farmers in “Le christianisme,” it is applicable to all).

Conclusion

The cult of ugliness seems to reign everywhere. Unfortunately, beauty has often even been removed from our churches and our liturgy. But the beauty in the liturgy is essential, as Weil is implicitly saying, in drawing people back from the secularized and uglified universe they live in, giving them roots to grow and the capacity to understand what life is truly about – not a comfort-zone that tends to our desires and need for distraction, but a heroic choice between good and evil, for God or against Him.

 © Marie Cabaud Meaney

1. All quotes in this section were from Weil’s fourth letter to Perrin that is to be found in Waiting for God.

For more elements regarding Simone Weil’s thoughts on the supernatural, see my analysis in: https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/spaziofilosofico/article/view/9964

For Weil’s thoughts on beauty, see my chapter in the forthcoming volume: Amazon.com: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil (Bloomsbury Handbooks): 9781350341623: McCullough, Lissa (Editor)

We read that the New York Archdiocese (in a message from the vicar general, Msgr. Joseph P. LaMorte) )has advised that “there is no need for” altar rails when “restoring places of worship.”.

Archdiocese of New York dismisses increased requests for altar rails, claims ‘no need’ for them.LifeSiteNews (1/7/2025)

Some pastors have been inquiring about reinstalling an altar rail. According to current directives there is no need for it. The General Instruction for the Roman Missal (GIRM) specifies that the normal posture for the reception of communion is standing. To install an altar rail would be to suggest a posture other than the GIRM’s stated norm. 1)

Now only last month Cardinal Cupich of Chicago had stated his displeasure at the faithful kneeling when receiving communion. His argumentation, insofar as he relies on authority at all, resembles that of Msgr. LaMorte. I would be surprised if these developments are unrelated.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credenda, The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (12/13/2024)

 What Cardinal Cupich and Msgr. LaMorte don’t bother to mention is that the GIRM specifically provides for kneeling at Communion. Furthermore, in the United States, the bishops had tried to make standing mandatory – this was changed at Vatican insistence in 2004 (Redemptionis Sacramentum). A position paper of the New York Archdiocese (On Receiving  Holy Communion), upon which Msgr. LaMorte relies for authority does mention the relevant provision of Redemptionis Sacramentum but gives a distorted presentation of the history and current legal status of the issue which exclusively favors standing. (Moreover, it also denies to kneeling and reception of communion on the tongue any special Eucharistic reverence). 2)

Of course, the original (and current) purpose of the altar rail is to mark off the sanctuary or chancel from the nave. It is the descendant of the medieval rood screen or the Eastern iconostasis. It does not primarily derive from the mode of receiving communion. The topic of the altar rail, involving separate ideological issues and ignorance as to what the Vatican Council and the Church actually decreed,  is a separate subject altogether. 

In the Archdiocese of New York itself, as recently as 1998,  a new church (St. Agnes) was built featuring an altar rail. However, as I wrote in 2011:

(C)an the “language” of Catholic traditional art indeed express the modernistic, non-traditional and ever-changing nature of the new liturgy? To point out just one example, by setting up a communion rail, the builders of the new St. Agnes intended to memorialize the return of the traditional mode of receiving communion – kneeling and on the tongue – to the Novus Ordo liturgy. Yet not too many years after the completion of this church, the US bishops tried to mandate receiving communion standing as obligatory in the Novus Ordo. 3)

If I were in a Novus Ordo parish yet desperately seeking to preserve traditional practices of piety, I would be worried. For it seems that some hierarchs would welcome revisiting and overturning  the compromise regarding the posture when receiving communion established in 2004. Cardinal Cupich, after all, has also effectively banned celebrations ad orientem in the novus ordo, which seems to contradict the liturgical books (if not the liturgical practice).4)  And this time there would be no resistance from the Vatican, for Cardinal Cupich enjoys the best of relations with the bishop of Rome. The war of Pope Francis and the progressive establishment against Catholic Tradition is by no means limited to the Traditional Mass!

Yet nevertheless the struggle goes on. As Msgr. LaMorte notes:

No one is sure where the impetus for this (altar rails– SC) is originating, but it seems to be picking up a bit of  steam. 5)

Could it be originating from man’s innate sense for beauty, truth and reverence? A sense that keeps breaking through and making itself felt despite all the official ideologies and attempts at manipulation. Just last year at the church of Corpus Christi in Manhattan, the tabernacle was restored to its old place of honor in the center of the sanctuary – supposedly at the express direction of Cardinal Dolan.  Yet the bulletin of this same parish had published earlier a statement – again by Cardinal Cupich – summarizing ideological reasons why the tabernacle shouldn’t be placed in a central position in a church! 6) The endless ideological conflict that defines the post-Conciliar church continues. Catholic Traditionalists, however,  long ago concluded there is a better way….

1.  Combined Mailing, Archdiocese of New York (December 2024). This entire publication, apparently intended for priests and religious of the archdiocese, is most interesting in its tone and subject matter.
2. Archdiocese of New York, On Receiving Holy Communion.
3. The Churches of New York VII: the Reform of the Reform, The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (4/13/2011)
4. Msgr. LaMorte recently assumed the duties of pastor at Holy Family parish in New York City. Under the prior pastor, Fr. Gerald Murray,  the Novus Ordo service was celebrated ad orientem. I recently observed that the parish is now back to the “mainstream.”
5. See footnote 1 supra.
6. A Visit to Columbia, The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (11/16/2023) (all links accesssed 1/10/2025)

Registration for the annual Women’s Retreat, which is scheduled for March 21-23, 2025 at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, L.I.,  is now open.  The Retreat Master is Fr. John Perricone and is sponsored by Agnus Dei Knights of Columbus Council.  130 women were in attendance last year. If you intend on coming, it is recommended that you reserve a spot sooner rather than later. Please contact Dan Marengo for more information and instructions on how to register. danmarengo@aol.com. Register by March 3.

The following is the weekly schedule of Traditional Masses at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Shrine, 448 E. 116th Street, New York, NY.

Sundays: 9:30 AM to 12 Noon Confessions; 10:30 AM Missa Cantata; 12 Noon Coffee Hour, Parish Hall ; 4:30 PM Solemn Vespers, Rosary and Benediction

Weekdays: 7:00 AM Low Mass; 7:45 AM Low Mass; 9:30 to 12 Noon Adoration; 3:00 PM Holy Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet

Saturdays: 7:45 AM Low Mass; 9:00 AM Low Mass; 9:30 AM to 12 Noon Adoration and Confessions; 3:00 PM Holy Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet

First Thursday of the Month:
6:00 PM Confessions; 7:00 PM Missa Cantata
First Friday of the Month:
All Day Adoration from 10 AM to 5 PM
First Saturday of the Month:
9:00 AM Missa Cantata if a Cantor is available, otherwise Low Mass; 10 AM Meditation on the Rosary, Adoration, Confessions, Benediction
Third Friday of the Month:
All Day Adoration from 10 AM to 4 PM; Low Mass at 4:30 PM, Intentions of the Most Precious Blood Prayer Group
Wednesdays and Saturdays: Novena to Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Veneration of the Icon of Our Lady of Mount Carmel after the morning Masses

On January 18, Father Christopher Salvatori will celebrate a Solemn Traidtional Mass in thanksgiving for the 25th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Harlem, New York. A reception will follow in the parish hall (RSVP required: 646-415-8818)

Saturday, January 18, 2025
11:00 AM Solemn Mass of Thanksgiving, Silver Jubilee of Father Christopher Salvatori S.A.C.
12:30 PM Reception in the Parish Hall, RSVP required
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
6:00 PM Confessions7:00 PM Solemn Mass of Thanksgiving, Solemnity of Saint Vincent Pallotti and Silver Jubilee of Father Christopher Salvatori SAC

This coming Sunday, January 5, is the the Vigil of the Epiphany in the traditional calendar. It is the tradition for holy water to be blessed on this day, together with chalk.

The following churches have scheduled Epiphany blessings:

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Oratory, Bridgeport, CT, Epiphany Water blessing on Sunday Jan 5 after the 10:15 a.m. Solemn Mass {bring your empty container to fill.  Solemn Choral Vespers & Benediction at 6:00 p.m.

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, CT, Epiphany Water Blessing will take place on January 5 following Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament at the conclusion of the 10:30am High Mass. Epiphany Water will be made available after this time along with blessed chalk.

Holy Innocents Church, Manhattan, Epiphany Water and chalk will be blessed in a ceremony lasting about 45 minutes following 2:30 p.m. Vespers on  January 5. Please bring the water you wish to be blessed and keep it with you in the pew. No water is to be left in the sacristy or unattended. At the appropriate time you will be invited to the Communion Rail for the celebrant to add the exorcised salt to your bottle of water. The blessed chalk will be available for you to take to your homes.

St. Margaret of Cortona, Riverdale, Bronx, Blessing of the Epiphany Water on Jan. 5. at 3:00 p.m. (Bring your own bottles of water; the chalk & directions on how to bless your home will be distributed)

St. Josaphat, Bayside, Queens, 11:30 am Solemn blessing of Epiphany Water

Annunciation Church, Crestwood, NY, The Epiphany Blessing will take place before holy Mass on Sunday Jan. 5 at 1pm.  Everyone will be invited to receive the their holy water and blessed chalk after Mass. Please note that we will have 2 very large vessels for the Epiphany Water. For this reason, please only bring empty bottles/vessels, which you will be able to fill from the larger vessels in the Sanctuary after Mass. Please do not bring containers that are already filled with water. 

Presentation Church, Port Ewen, NY, blessing of Epiphany water and chalk at 6:30 pm. Bring your bottles of water and chalk.

Our Lady of Fatima Chapel, Pequannock, NJ, Blessing of Epiphany Water and chalk on Jan. 5 after 1:30 pm Mass. 

St. Anthony of Padua Oratory, West Orange, NJ, Blessing of Epiphany Water on Jan. 5 after 11 am Mass.

St. John Vianney Church, Colonna, NJ, 1:30 pm. Please bring your own bottles of water for blessing.

St. John the Baptist, Allentown, NJ, blessing of Epiphany water on Jan. 5 at 3 pm

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In the traditional calendar, Monday, January 6th is the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord. The following churches will be offering traditional Masses. Please inform us of other churches in the area that are offering this Mass.

Connecticut

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, Solemn Mass 9:15 am; 7 pm

Pius X Church, Fairfield, 7 pm

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Oratory, Bridgeport, CT, Solemn Mass celebrated by Father Novajosky at 6:00 p.m., followed by traditional blessing of chalk. Reception in the church hall after the ceremony

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, 6 pm low Mass

New York

Holy Innocents Church, New York, NY, 6pm

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, New York, NY, Low Masses: 7:00 AM and 7:45 AM; 9:30 AM to 12 Noon Adoration; 3:00 PM Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries of the Holy Rosary; 6:00 PM Confessions; 7:00 PM Solemn Mass, Procession with and Veneration of the Infant Jesus, Blessing and Distribution of Chalk

St. Margaret of Cortona, Riverdale, Bronx, Solemn Mass 6:30 pm

St. Josaphat, Bayside, Queens, 7 pm

St. Paul the Apostle, Yonkers, 12 noon

Sacred Heart Church, Esopus, NY, 11:30 am

St. Mary and St. Andrew, Ellenville, NY, 7 pm

Holy Trinity Church, Poughkeepsie, 7 pm

New Jersey

Our Lady of Sorrows, Jersey City, 6:30 pm

St. Anthony of Padua Oratory, West Orange, NJ, low Mass 9 am; high Mass 7 pm

Shrine Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Raritan, NJ, 7 pm

St. John the Baptist, Allentown, NJ, 6:45 pm chalking of the church doors; 7 pm Solemn Mass. Epiphany water and chalk will be distributed after Mass; Dinner reception to follow in church hall.

This Wednesday, January 1, is the Octave Day of Christmas, the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord. It is a Holy Day of Obligation. The following churches will offer Traditional Masses. If you know of a church that is not on our list, please let us know.

Connecticut

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, Solemn Mass 10 am

Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Bridgeport, low Mass 8:30 am; high Mass 10:15 am

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, low Mass 12 noon; high Mass 6 pm

Georgetown Oratory of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Redding, 6 pm Missa Cantata sung by the Viri Galilaei

St. Martha Church, Enfield, 7 pm

St. Michael Church, Pawcatuck, Missa Cantata 10 am

New York

Church of the Holy Innocents, New York, NY, low Mass 9 am; high Mass 10:30 am

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, New York, NY, 10:30 am Missa Cantata

Our Lady of Refuge, Briggs Avenue at E. 196 St., Bronx, 1 pm

St. Josaphat, Bayside, Queens, Missa Cantata 9:30 am

St. Rocco Church, Glen Cove, Long Island, 11:30 am Missa Cantata.

St. Matthew, Dix Hills, Long Island, 10:30 am

St. Paul the Apostle, Yonkers, 12 noon

Annunciation Church, Crestwood, 2 pm

Immaculate Conception, Sleepy Hollow, low Mass 4 pm

St. Mary and St. Andrew, Ellenville, Sung Midnight Mass and 11:30 am

St. Joseph Church, Middletown, 10:15 am

Sacred Heart Church, Esopus, 11:30 am

Holy Trinity, Poughkeepsie, 7 pm

New Jersey

Our Lady of Sorrows, Jersey City, 10 am

Our Lady of Victories, Harrington Park, 8:45 am

Our Lady of Fatima, Pequannock, 7 am, 9 am, 11 am, 1:30pm, 5 pm

St. Anthony Oratory, West Orange, 7:30 am, 9 am, 11 am High Mass

Corpus Christi, South River, 6:15 pm

Blessed Sacrament Chapel, Raritan, 10:30 am

St. John the Baptist, Allentown, 11 am