Tonight, Monday, February 26, 2018, there will be a Solemn Requiem Mass and Absolution at the Catafalque to mark the 100th Anniversary of the Happy Valley Racecourse Fire in Hong Kong at which 670 people perished.

The Mass is at the Pontifical Shrine of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in New York City at 7:30 PM.

Following Mass, the Sacred Ministers will change from black to violet vestments and lead the choir and people in a procession throughout the Church singing a Solemn Litany of the Saints to beseech our Lady of Mt. Carmel and the Communion of Saints to intercede for the persecuted Church in China and protect it against the attacks it faces today.

At the Requiem Mass, the choir will sing the Missa pro defunctis for six voices by Manuel Cardoso (1566-1650).

The Mass is being sponsored by a family that lost five members in the tragedy.

It’s a sad undertaking: a visit to the former church of St Vincent de Paul on a cold and rainy day in February. The neoclassical facade of the 1930’s stands forlorn on West 23rd street surrounded by nondescript chain stores and, more often than not since a blast rocked the surroundings two years ago, by empty storefronts. Statues, windows and welcome boards have been stripped away; a bum pulls down his trousers on the steps. It’s a sad end for a parish that, as the French national church of New York, once enjoyed a certain degree of celebrity in the city – even if located in a neighborhood that, until the last few decades, was out of the way and mildly disreputable as well.

(Above and below)The neoclassical facade of 1939 is much more recent than the rest of the church.

By 2016 all appeals against its closure and sale had been rejected by the Vatican.  In that year too an explosion knocked out the facade windows of the closed church. And finally, also in 2016, the property was sold to a “hotelier”;  in 2017 a new owner took over.  But as of today the church still stands – eloquent testimony to the post-Vatican II progress of Catholicism in this city.

(Above) Boards, like a strange dead eye, where the rose-shaped window looked out on the street.

For a description of the church before its closing see HERE.

“The American Delegation of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George invites you to a Solemn High Mass that we will be sponsoring in honor of Our Lady of Sorrows to be celebrated for the persecuted Christians of the Middle East at Most Precious Blood Church at 113 Baxter Street in Manhattan’s Little Italy on Friday, March 23rd at 7:15 p.m.”

The Jersey Shore has long been a barren desert for the Traditional Latin Mass. This is slowly changing. The Traditional Latin Mass is returning this Lent to Holy Innocents Church in Neptune, New Jersey, after its enthusiastic reception at the parish this past Advent.

Photos from the New York Purgatorial Society monthly Mass in the Dominican Rite at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, New York,  on February 19  for the Feast of St. Francis de Capillas, OP.  Photos courtesy of Diana Yuan.

Special Masses for the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey . . .

At St. Mary Church, Greenwich, CT, a traditional Mass will be offered on Thursday, February 22 at 7:30 pm, for the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter.

It’s nice to hear that the Catholic Herald will be opening an American edition. Certainly with Damian Thompson’s involvement the UK original has improved by leaps and bounds. A recent article in the American Conservative, however,  by Michael Warren Davis, billed as the “US editor of the Catholic Herald,”  reaises grave doubts about the direction of the new publication.

Mr Davis, in Joe Sobran, Recovered from the Ashes, indeed has the merit of calling attention to a great commentator whose writings on social topics, especially abortion, are becoming more relevant by the day. But in fact the bulk of this article is a long diatribe against the “antisemite” Sobran – indeed, “there can be no posthumous rehabilitation for the man himself.”  We should embrace the ideas of Sobran, says Davis, while condemning the man. So Davis advocates a rediscovery of “Sobranism” without Sobran just like, after the alleged “scandal” of Charlottesville,  “conservatives” divorced  “Trumpism” from Trump. A view which entirely accords with the party line of  Mr Dreher and company at the American Conservative – where one today finds, with the exception of the contributions of Pat Buchanan, only endless posts denouncing Trump. It is instructive to see how “conservatives ” once more explicitly endorse the tactics of the  left establishment –   the ostracism and  damnatio memoriae of opponents –  just as William F. Buckley and the “pro-life” Human Life Review practiced  them in Sobran’s own day.

But. Mr Davis adds, there is one further great merit of the thought of Sobran: it is a “small-c Catholic” “best defense” against the Catholic “integralism”  of Brent Bozell and the Triumph magazine “crowd.”   You see, Joe Sobran was allegedly one of the few who “addressed the rise of neo-intgralism ” and “have engaged with integralism on dogmatic grounds.”  Amazing, is it not, that the supposedly exorcised ghost of a long-dead Catholic publication still represents a kind of ultimate adversary for Mr Davis  – one so threatening that even Sobran can be welcomed back to confront it.

Aside from its numerous factual inaccuracies, Mr Davis’s article is a remarkable witness to the atavistic drive of  “conservatives” to reach some kind of accommodation with the reigning political and media establishment.  Given the innumerable reverses the conservatives have recently suffered in both politics and the Church one would have expected that, like elsewhere in the conservative movement,  a process of reconsideration of  positions would have set in. But that’s clearly not happened yet in the case of either Mr Davis or the American Conservative. I have serious concerns about the new US Catholic Herald to the extent the views described above will predominate there. But I do agree with Mr Davis on one thing: the writings of Joe Sobran are a treasure of insights that every (real) conservative needs to explore. And in so doing he will rediscover – contrary to the recommendations of Mr Davis –  the personality of the man Sobran himself.

(SOURCE)

Our Society will be sponsoring a Solemn Mass at St. Agnes Church in Brooklyn for the Feast of St. Joan of Arc on Wednesday,  May 30 at 7 pm.

A historic church lovingly called the “Cathedral of Brooklyn,” by locals,  St. Agnes is located at 433 Sackett Street in Carroll Gardens. This will be the first Traditional Mass in this church since the Second Vatican Council.

The F & G trains and the B57 buses are a short walk from the church on the next street over (Smith Street).