On Friday, Oct 2, at 7:30 PM, a sung Mass in the extraordinary form for the feast of the Holy Guardian Angels will be offered at St. Mary Church, Greenwich, CT.
Reception to follow.

This statue appears in Holy Redeemer Church, Manhattan

1. Ember Days – Wednesday, September 23rd, Friday, September 25th, and Saturday, September 26th will be EMBER DAYS.

Our Pastor has encouraged the parish to keep the traditional practice of fasting and abstinence on these days, as well as to attend Holy Mass for the sanctification of the season of autumn.

The Ember Days at Holy Innocents are always observed with, at least, a Sung Mass.

2. Solemn Festive Mass for Our Lady of Mercy – On Thursday, September 24th, 2015, Holy Innocents Parish will observe the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy as part of the prayers offered for the intentions of the Holy Father during his visit to the USA, during his visit to the boundaries of our Parish (Madison Square Garden is within the parochial boundaries of Holy Innocents Parish), and in anticipation of the Year of Mercy.

O God, Who by means of the most glorious Mother of Thy Son, wast pleased to give new offspring to Thy Church for the deliverance of Christians from the power of the heathen: grant, we beseech Thee, that we too, who love and honor Her as the foundress of so great a work, may by Her merits and intercession be ourselves delivered from all our sins and from the bondage of the evil one. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ…

May Our Lady of Mercy guide us in the practice of real works of mercy, and may God, through Her, free us from the power of the modern heathens who usurp the name of mercy at the expense of justice and the true teachings of Holy Mother Church.

3. Special Lecture – On Church and State by Mr. Charles Coloumbe.

On Saturday, September 26th, 2015 Mr. Charles Coloumbe will have a lecture on Church and State at 7 PM in the parish hall of the Church of the Holy Innocents.

Charles Coloumbe is a prolific author, lecturer, and  Catholic historian. Charles presents an unmatched life story –from military officer training, to standup comedy, and speaking at Oxford Union– he is sure to present the most engaging, thought provoking, and purposive symposium of 2015 in the Tri-State area.

For more information, please contact Jon Mangin to reserve your place! You can e-mail him at JDMangin@gmail.com or call toll free 1-877-845-3798.

Admission is $20 per ticket at the door. Call ahead for a 50% discount! All are welcome!

Beginning on Friday, October 2nd, Sacred Heart Church in Clifton, NJ,  will be celebrating a TLM in honor of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus every First Friday at 7:00 p.m.

There will be confessions starting at 6:30 p.m
Mass will be followed by adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament until 11:00 p.m. at which time there will be Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. A holy hour of reparation to the Sacred Heart in Spanish will take place at 8:30 p.m. and in English at 10:00 p.m.

Sacred Heart Church
145 Randolph Ave, Clifton, NJ 07011
(973) 546-6012

The Lumen Christi Association of New York: Pro Fide et Cultura is sponsoring an event to benefit the Benedictine Monks of Norcia, Italy on October 7, 2015 at the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan from 5:30 – 8:00 pm.

The guest speaker will be Catholic author and NY Times op-Ed columnist Ross Douthat. The title of his talk is “Religion and the Fate of the West: Being Catholic in a Secular Age”. The founding prior of the monastery, Fr. Cassian Folsom, will also be giving a brief presentation on Monastic Life in Norcia and the Restoration of Christendom – Worship, Work and Art.

Please visit www.lumenchristiny.com for more details and payment options.

All proceeds for this event will be donated to the Monks of Norcia Foundation.

This window is St. Mary Church, Manhattan

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
by Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro

In the gospel Jesus responds to the aggressive questioning of the Pharisees reaffirming the greatest and most basic commandments of our faith that want to entrap Him, restating the most basic command of our faith, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt. 22-37-38) To this text Mark and Luke add with thy whole strength, meaning that we shall love the Lord with all our energies. The 613 commands of the Mosaic Law can be summarized into two prescriptions: love God and your neighbor. According to St. Paul, love is the greatest theological virtue and fulfills God’s moral law. But we have to understand the meaning of love against many contemporary abuses of this concept in the same way that we have to explain clearly the meaning of God’s mercy.

It is interesting to note that Christ said that you should love God, not fear Him. For love is more than fear. To fear belongs to the ones who are in a forced condition, to love belongs to sons. Fear is based on compulsion, love in freedom. Who serves God only out of fear of punishment has an imperfect relation with him, he might be saved but he certainly will have to be purified and moved to the perfect relation that comes out from love. God does not want to be served due to fear as a hard master, but to be loved as a father, for He has given the spirit of adoption to all men that have received baptism.

This basic teaching of Christ should be interpreted as saying: You should love God with your whole will; this means that we should love God with a total undivided fidelity and we should not give a portion of our love to an idol, or an ideology or anything whatsoever that it is contrary to God. All our actions should be consciously directed towards Him and towards His service. We should consciously choose Him as our highest good and prefer Him to all things whatsoever. For he that believes that all possible goodness is in God and that without Him there is no possible goodness, loves God with his whole soul. The most important concern our lives should be to fulfill all His precepts and be obedient to Him in all things out of love. Even if this allegiance to Him would have a high cost for us. We have to remember that St. John tells us: “In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commandments. And his commands are not burdensome,” (I Jn. 5:3) St. Mathew tells us “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” God’s commandments are not burdensome because He leads us to do what it is accordance with the nature that He has given us. We can clearly see with regards to the teachings of the Church on marriage. The unity, indissolubility and the openness to children are inscribed in our nature or using a Thomistic expression they are connatural to us. He leads us to do what would make us happy on this earth and what would afterwards open for us the doors of Paradise. We love God with our whole mind when we sincerely try to understand the wisdom that is inherent in His commands. If we pray for this wisdom most certainly the Holy Spirit will give it to us. He is burden is light because He provides us the graces to fulfill the precepts that He has given us. The movements towards rebellion that sometimes we experience within ourselves against those commandments they do not come from our nature, but from the wound that we have in our nature and from temptations that come from the World and from the Enemy of mankind. In the collect of today’s Mass we pray that we should be able with His graces to shun all the wiles of our enemy, to follow Him with pure mind our only God. St. Bernard in his Book on the Love of God states, “The measure of loving God is, to love without measure.” To the immense goodness of God we have to respond with a love without measure. We should live in such a way that nothing might diminish our love for God or transfer part of our allegiance to another person or ideologies or material advantages. We always have to keep in mind that we cannot serve two Masters.

The second command that we should love our neighbor as ourselves should have as a basic starting point the understanding that we should have a proper and right love of ourselves. The right love of ourselves should leads to love God because we were created and redeemed by Him and to desire our eternal and undivided union with Him in Heaven. What we desire and try to provide for ourselves we should try to desire and try to provide to the persons that the Lord has placed in our vicinity. In this we would be following the golden rule that our Lord has given to us, “”Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you.”(Mat. 7:12) St. Augustine in de Vera Religione would explain: “For this is the law of God that the good things which a man wishes to receive, he should wish likewise for his neighbor. And the evils which he wishes they should not to happen to himself, he should wish that his neighbor would avoid.” So our first desire for the persons that Lord has placed close to us is that they should know Him as He is and that out of this knowledge love might result and as a consequence they might achieve salvation. It is a caricature of love to let our neighbors remain in error about the teachings of Christ that lead to salvation or to remain silent about sinful situations. Obviously here we should use some prudence, but this virtue should never be the excuse for carnal prudence or cowardice. Second in the measure that we experience the need of basic spiritual, intellectual and material things we should be concerned that all our companions might obtain those same things. Obviously as I have explained before following the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas we have to love all men but in justice we have to occupy ourselves first of the ones that are closer to us because they are part of the same natural family or the same supernatural family which is the Church. All men have been created by God in some ways we can say that all men have God as their father, but we have stronger bonds with the ones that are our brethren because they have received spiritual adoption through baptism and are fed by Body and Blood in the Eucharist. Our relational and material charity naturally has limits, but our spiritual charity can be without limits in as much as we can pray for the salvation of all men.

Christ underlines that “The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Mt. 22:40) We can say that these commands are a summary of the Decalogue. The precepts of faith, hope, charity and religion are included in the commandment to love God and are made explicit in the first table of the law. The precepts of charity towards our neighbors that can be subdivided in particular virtues like justice, truth, fidelity, friendship, mercy and many others are the ones made explicit in the second table of the law.

It is very interesting to see how Jesus using His Divine intelligence leads the Pharisees to confusion. They are totally incapable of responding the question that the Lord had made to them. Those individuals wanted to entrap Jesus and they were not able to respond a simple question that the He had made to them. David was calling the Lord his descendant that was the Messiah, because this descendant that had received human nature from him was also God.

Today September 20th on the yearly anniversary of the storming of Rome in 1870 by the Italian troops we pray for the souls of the soldiers who gave their life defending the papacy and also for the souls of our enemies as Blessed Pious IX instructed us to pray.

On this Sunday through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary that was the one the only creature that fulfilled these two commandments in a near perfect way let us ask for the grace of having a growing love of God and neighbor.
May the Lord Bless you and keep you.

Society for Catholic Liturgy Conference
Oct. 1-3, 2015

liturgysociety.org/conference.html

Union League Club, 38 East 37th Street
Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, Mott St. between Prince and Houston
Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, 18 Bleecker St.

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN FOR IMPORTANT CONFERENCE ON THE LITURGY
Registration Deadline is September 22.

Registration is now open for the Society for Catholic Liturgy’s 20th annual conference. Renowned scholars, musicians, artists, and architects from all over the world gather in New York City to discuss this year’s theme: “The Liturgy: It Is Right and Just.”

The Most Reverend Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco will deliver the keynote address at the Union League Club on Thursday, October 1. And on Friday, October 2, at 9 AM, he will celebrate a Solemn Pontifical Mass (Usus Antiquior), accompanied by a sixteen-voice choir, at the historic Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mott St.

Two days of lectures will follow at the Archbishop Fulton J.Sheen Center for Thought and Culture on Bleecker St.

Speakers will include Dr. William Mahrt, of Stanford University, who will discuss how the various styles and hierarchies of Gregorian chant melodies coordinate with the action of the liturgy.

Dr. Michon Matthiesen, of the University of St. Mary, will explore the nature of the act of liturgical worship in terms of the virtue of justice.

Fr. Michael Lang, a priest of the Oratory of St Philip Neri in London, Lecturer in Church History at Heythrop College, and editor of the journal Antiphon, will assess the central importance of the Last Supper tradition for the shaping of the early Christian Eucharist.

The Pastoral Track of the conference will offer practical workshops for parish and diocesan personnel. Topics will range from a presentation on liturgical preaching by Fr. George Rutler, to building and funding parish and children’s programs in sacred music, to remedying architectural problems in churches.

And there will be plenty of opportunity for socializing at breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. All are welcome for three days of learning, prayer, and camaraderie.

For more information about the conference schedule, and to register, go to: http://liturgysociety.org/conference.html.

Founded in 1995, the Society for Catholic Liturgy is a unique organization that brings together faithful Catholic scholars and artists from around the world to recover, discuss, and promote the rich liturgical tradition of the Church. The Society holds an annual three-day conference, and publishes Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal, which deals with important theoretical and practical questions in the fields of liturgy and sacramental theology.

Solemn Mass, according to the 1962 missal, being celebrated at the shrine in 2006.

This year from September 18-20 the “Pilgrimage for the Restoration” will once more make its way to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, NY and celebrate its concluding liturgy – no longer, alas, in the main shrine church. But they will encounter a shrine soon to be under new management. For the Jesuits are leaving after 130 years. The shrine – which has just undertaken a major fundraising drive –  will remain open – at least for now. The shrine will rely on visiting priests to carry on as reported – somewhat inelegantly – by the local press:

“The Jesuit ministry will leave the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, but visiting priests and nuns will still conduct Masses there.” The Leader-Herald

“Unlike a church, however, the shrine — resting place of four Jesuit saints — cannot be closed and sold off. Instead, it will transition to more of a tourist destination, with new signs and other enhancements to present information to visitors.” “With the loss of the Jesuit priests, the shrine will focus more on its role as a religious destination rather than a church community.” The Daily Gazette

I cannot say I am sorry to see the Jesuits go – what with their contemptuous and insulting treatment of the FSSPX pilgrimage last year and the hostility shown in recent years to the “Pilgrimage for the Restoration.” They have dug their own grave. But what of the future?

” [T]he Jesuits will turn over daily management of the shrine to Parish Property Management, Inc., which is a facilities management company founded to serve religious communities and institutions. It already helps manage the shrine. The company manages more than 200 religious properties across the eastern coast of the United States and Caribbean Islands.” The Amsterdam Recorder

So for the time being the shrine of the North American Martyrs  continues to welcome pilgrims and “tourists.” I would hope that a shrine of such great saints will remain intact and accessible to all!

The Roman Forum
New York City Church History Program
2015-2016

Splendors and Miseries of the Tridentine Life:
The High Baroque and the Architects of Demolition: 1689-1748

Lecturer: John Rao, D. Phil., Oxford University
Associate Professor of History, St. John’s University

September 13–The Political and Religious Contours of a Divided
Christendom (1689-1740)
September 20–Continued Tridentine Reform and High Baroque Culture: I
October 4—— Continued Tridentine Reform and High Baroque Culture: II
October 18—–New World Christianity
November 8— Catholic Minds and Catholic Mystics: Bossuet & Fenelon
November 22–Quesnel, Richerism, and the New Jansenism
December 6—-Unigenitus
December 13– Appelants and the Parlement-Jansenist Fronde
January 10—– Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques and the Birth of the Cause Célèbre
January 24—– Jesuits, Jansenists, and The Chinese Rites Issue
February 7 —-Peter the Great and the Subversion of Holy Russia
February 21— The Republic of Letters and the Subtle Spread of Spinoza
March 6——– Royal Society, Locke, Newton, The Spectator, and
Freemasonry
March 20—— Voltaire and Continental Anglomania
April 3——— Prussian Pietism and the Moderate Enlightenment
April 17——– The Cult of the Sacred Heart, Catholic “Enlightenment”, and
the Flight from the Supernatural
May 1———-Jansenism, Pietism, Enlightenment, and the Regalist Advance
May 8———– The War of the Austrian Succession and the End of the
Beginning (1740-1748)

All Sessions Meet on Sundays, at 2:30 P.M.
Wine & Cheese Reception. Entrance Fee at door of $15.00

Our Lady of Pompeii Church
16 Carmine Street
Rectory Entrance on Carmine Street, west of Bleecker Street
A, B, C, D, E, F, V trains to West 4 th Street Station

There will be a traditional mass at Saint Mary in Greenwich, CT on Monday, September 14th at 7:30 PM to celebrate the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross.

On September 14th,  there will be two traditional Masses at Holy Innocents:

a) Low Mass: Visiting priest, Fr. Mark Withoos (private secretary to Cardinal Pell), will celebrate a Low Mass at 11 AM.

b) Solemn Mass: the 6 PM Mass will be a Solemn Mass.

St. Helena finds the True Cross. Detail of ceiling fresco from the church of Breitenthal, Germany

On Tuesday, September 15th, Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the 6PM Mass at Holy Innocents will be a Solemn Mass.