Here is the schedule of TLMs for June 2024 (and 5/31) at the Shrine Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

• FRI 5/31 – Queenship of Mary – Oratory of St. Philip Neri
• SAT 6/1 – 9am – First Saturday – Oratory of St. Philip Neri
• FRI 6/7 – Sacred Heart – Fr. Skoblow
• THU 6/13 – Eucharistic Heart – Fr. Zannetti
• SAT 6/29 – SS Peter & Paul – Fr. Perricone

Shrine Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament,50 W. Somerset Street, Raritan, NJ. More info: BlessedSacramentShrine.com

This Thursday, May 30, is the Feast of Corpus Christi. The following churches will offer Traditional Masses.

Thursday, May 30

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT, 12:10 pm, Solemn Mass and Eucharistic procession. Mass for 4 Voices by William Byrd

Sacred Heart Oratory, Georgetown, CT, 6 pm, Solemn Mass with procession and Benediction

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, CT, 6 pm with procession of the Most Blessed Sacrament around the church building.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Bridgeport, CT, 6 pm, Solemn Mass and procession.

Holy Innocents Church, New York, NY, 6 pm, Missa Cantata followed by outdoor procession and triple Benediction

Most Holy Redeemer, New York, NY, 6 pm followed by Eucharistic procession to St. Brigid’s Church with Benediction.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, New York, NY, 7 pm Solemn Mass; 8 pm Outdoor procession; 8:30 pm Benediction.

St Josaphat, Bayside, Queens, 7pm Missa Cantata followed by procession

St. Paul the Apostle, Yonkers, 12 noon

St. Andrew Church, Ellenville, NY, 7pm Missa Cantata

Our Lady of Sorrows, Jersey City, 7 pm

Our Lady of Fatima, Pequannock, NJ, 7 am, 9 am, 7 pm

St. Athony of Padua Oratory, West Orange, NJ, 9 am, Low Mass, 7 pm High Mass and procession

St. John the Baptist, Allentown, NJ, 7:00p.m. Mass followed by Eucharistic procession. 

The archdiocese has published the decree of merger of St. John the Evangelist- Our Lady of Peace and Holy Family parishes. Holy Family will be the surviving parish:

This is the second time the parish has been terminated. 1) The first was in 1969, when the archdiocese demolished the original parish church of 1880 and in its place started construction of the New York Catholic Center – a small skyscraper housing the legion of Archdiocesan bureaucrats and a Catholic high school.  We are fortunate to have a witness to these events who was also an active participant in this process. Monsignor George A. Kelly was Secretary for Education in the New York archdiocese and later the first pastor of the new St. John the Evangelist located within the Catholic Center. Monsignor Kelly is probably still best known for his 1979 book The Battle for the American Catholic Church, a seminal text for Conservative Catholicism.

Kelly’s The Parish: as seen from the Church of Saint John the Evangelist, New York City 1840-1973 (St. John’s University, NY 1973) is a work full of curious and valuable facts on the immediate post-conciliar era. The author, in the final two chapters dealing with the demolition of the old St. John the Evangelist and the building of the Catholic Center refers to himself in the third person. Much of what Kelly writes in justification of the archdiocesan actions is startlingly familiar: 

Indeed, radical uprooting of old structures is sometimes required in the name of life. Many large churches, providing diminishing service, stand long after people have moved. And frittering away limited church resources on ancient forms when substantial new needs existed in other places, is not good sense, if only because of the unreasonable amount of priest power and money power locked into ecclesiastical enterprises no longer productive. (p. 123)

But ideological and theological rationales also justified the decision:

Moreover,  liturgical changes have made 19th century churches less than useful to 21st century needs. … When Father Flood was building the 1880 church, some judged 1,200 seats too few. Today cathedral-like churches are hindrances to the eucharistic community and 200 people scattered throughout a nave built to sit six times that number give the church the appearance of a museum, not a dynamic house of worship. (p.123)

I was thus intrigued to find explicitly stated in Kelly’s book many of the things I had surmised from the location, décor and architecture of the new St. John the Evangelist. Of course, whether these arguments were meant seriously or were merely excuses to justify an essentially financial transaction I will leave to the reader to decide. Kelly himself describes a real estate transaction involving Cathedral High School proceeding in parallel with the closure and demolition of old St. John’s. Here too ideological arguments were adduced to locate this school in an affluent area. 

Of course, on Monsignor Kelly’s own evidence, St. John’s was, up to the Second Vatican Council and even afterwards,  not a moribund parish at all. Attendance had leveled off over the decades, but strangely the parish income steadily increased because of the continued development of nearby Sutton Place. There was still a functioning school. Indeed, by 2024 standards,  St. John’s in 1969 looked distinctly healthy! 

The parishioners did not at all agree with the decision to demolish their church. From reading Kelly’s book and from other sources,  opposition seems to have been fierce and the process traumatic. Kelly describes the laity of the parish as ignorant and emotional:

While the decision was supported by an array of substantial arguments in its favor, those directly affected, especially the parents of school children, were distressed and angry. (pp. 125-126)

In this book we thus have yet another witness to the contempt of the post-conciliar clergy for the laity (which continues to the present day).  And of course, this comes from the pen of a “conservative,” not a radical reformer! 

Archbishop Cooke, despite his ineffectual, Pope Paul VI-like persona, could, just like the Pope, take drastic action against those who were seen standing in the way of progress. The parish was duly closed, and the construction of the new building began. St. John’s parish virtually ceased to exist:

 (O)nly one third of (the) number (of  parishioners)remained after the demolition of the old church in 1969 to offer mass in a very unattractive chapel situated on the ground floor of a solid but hardly well-appointed rectory. Sunday attendance was down to 700 and there was little call for baptism, matrimony, penance, extreme unction, indeed for any substantial priestly service. All parish organizations were moribund and total parish income fell between 1969 and 1970 from $223,000 to approximately $106,000. (p.135)

Kelly then describes what he audaciously calls the “Fifth Spring of the Parish.”  St. John’s had to start all over again  “as if it were 1840.” Kelly writes that “1973 not only marks the end of four years of stress and unhappiness but hopefully the beginning of a new parochial dream.” (p. 135) Kelly’s confidence in the future, however, seems to have been tentative, even shaky, based more on ideology and wishful thinking than facts: 

“In spite of a sense of loss for the old, a new church might be more salvific for the future. … Not every parishioner would agree with this, and time may yet prove their judgment correct.” (p. 137)

“What may be expected of the new parish of Saint John’s will only be known after the more commodious and properly appointed facilities of the new church are completed and are available for use.” (p.145).

“There is no great rush to utilize the parish facilities as yet. Only time will tell whether St. John’s will survive as a neighborhood parish.” (p.142)

Did parish life survive after 1973 or, as Kelly feared, did the new church simply become a chapel for the school and the archdiocesan employees? I do not know enough about the post-1973 history to say.  Over the years, however,  an array of figurative art was added to soften the original, radical decorative scheme of Kelly’s time. In 2014, the (relatively)nearby parish of Our Lady of Peace was merged into St. John’s. Within two years the church building of Our Lady of Peace was sold. That does not bode well for the continued existence of the “worship space” of the former parish of St. John’s, once the last archdiocesan offices vacate the Catholic Center in 2025. 

St John’s is one of the earliest examples in New York of a parish restructuring/closure, directed from the top, and also of a new Novus Ordo worship environment. Monsignor Kelly wrote thst only time would tell how successful the newborn parish would be. Now, in 2024, we do know the answer: the new St. John’s was an abysmal failure ending in its dissolution.

On the parish church of St. John the Evangeliset see our post. On the looming fate of the archdiocesan headquarters see HERE.

1. Ignoring various early moves between the founding of the parish in 1840 and 1880. St Patrick’s cathedral is built on the original site of St John’s!

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend services several times at the Church of Saint-Eugène, Paris. This is a diocesan parish. Here the Traditional Mass is celebrated and a splendid musical culture is cultivated led by several noteworthy musicians. The Traditional Sunday Mass (the main Mass of the day) was thronged by an overflowing congregation of all ages – a rarity in France! The music, although in a style somewhat unfamilar to me, was of course most impressive. The Novus Ordo is also celebrated but in a manner extremely traditional. Even the parish bulletin grappled fearlessly with major issues of the day.

It was here that the late Nicholas Krasno – a long-standing member of this Society – sang in the schola. Indeed, it was the opportunity, after Summorum Pontificum, to attend and sing in such a church that inspired him to join the Roman Catholic Church. For it was after Summorum Pontificum that a Catholic could, at least in some places, regularly experience the fullness of the traditional liturgy in ceremony and music.

And perhaps for Nicholas Krasno there were additional factors that explained his attachment to this church. For does not Saint-Eugène in several respects resemble Krasno’s former beloved Anglican parish of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York City? Both are 19th century recreations of the style of the high French Gothic. Both used innovative construction methods, the earlier Saint-Eugène was built around an iron framework, while Saint Mary the Virgin was the first steel-framed church.

(St. Mary the Virgin) is in fact the earliest ecclesiastical use of constructional steel – a technique that had been first tried for office buildings in Chicago only 4 years previous. 1)

Both churches feature beautiful windows and decoration. In both the musical culture was fostered:

The musical program of St. Mary’s expressed an unabashed preference for works of the great musicians of the Roman Church: favorite composers included Beethoven,Haydn and Weber, and most of the French romantic school – Gounod, Franck. Faure and Guilmant. 2)

And both were despised by modernist taste – only to experience a reassessment in more recent years.

1. Krasno, Nicholas, A Guide to the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, New York City at 17( 2nd edition revised, New York, 1999). The architects, Napoleon and Pierre Le Brun, were Roman Catholic. For Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile#History.

2. Krasno, op. cit. at 63- 65. Of course, in the Roman Catholic Church these works later fell victim (in the US) to the strictures of Pius X.

“Virtus Signaling,” The Lamp, April 5, 2024.

In 2020, I was dissatisfied by the initial offerings of the new Catholic magazine The Lamp. Too many contributors seemed focused on evading, instead of facing, the reality of the Catholic Church today. By 2022, however, a subset of that magazine’s writers – including its editor – had shaken off their initial noncommittal airs and started dealing frankly with major issues of the Church (especially Traditionis Custodes). Now, in the April issue of The Lamp, the magazine’s editor, Matthew Walther, in a devastating essay takes aim at one of the most offensive features of the contemporary Church in the US: mandatory Virtus “training” for all those involved in church functions. For those who don’t know it, Virtus is a program supposedly designed to prevent sexual abuse – it is the exact equivalent of corporate training videos on the evils of sexual harassment. Since I had given up my “office” in the Church (serving as an usher) years ago, I have lost touch with the Virtus and its mentality. Others in my family have not been so fortunate.

Walther skewers the mind-numbing blather of Virtus: “its all-encompassing banality is impossible to describe.” By working through preposterous scenarios, Virtus is supposed to enable trainees to recognize the signs of child abuse – and report them. The onus of eliminating child abuse is thus placed squarely on the laity. Yet Virtus dances around the main characteristic of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church – that overwhelmingly the clergy are the perpetrators of abuse.

Walther proceeds from a critique of the program to more profound reflections on the state of the Church. What are we to think when the Church, instead of “insisting on an older moral vocabulary – the language of iniquity, of enormity, of sacrilege in addition to rape” – on the one hand, and “the virtues of chastity, charity, prudence, (and) wisdom” on the other, with Virtus:

“substitutes compliance, bulletins, slides, training, risk aversion and mitigation, liability minimization (and) cost control?”

Is it not obvious that the Church sees child sexual abuse as primarily a problem of protecting its own financial resources? Is the Church then just “one more faceless business entity?”

Further, Virtus makes of the Church a “surveillance state” in which the laity are summoned to view each other – and the clergy too – as potential abusers. Informing is encouraged. Things like Virtus have contributed to this situation:

“(P)riests in the United States today are aloof, isolated in thier parishes or, increasingly, their parish “clusters’ or “collectives.”

Finally, Walther describes a pervasive “randomness and caprice” in the “secular security theater” world of Virtus:

“(S)uch inconsistency is essential to security theater. Far more effectively than any consistently defined regime, arbitrariness underlines the all-pervading quality of semi-occluded authorities while heightening the atmosphere of crisis.“

Walther’s observations resemble my own thoughts on the totalitarian ultramontanism of the Catholic Church under Pope Francis.

“Virtue Signaling” is essential reading!

Meier, Michael, Der Papst der Enttäuschungen: Warum Franziskus kein Reformer ist (The Pope of Disapointments: Why Francis is no Reformer)

Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2024

What does the progressive establishment think of Francis? You would think their evaluation should be entirely favorable. After all, under the Woke Pope (Newsweek) there’s virtual identity now between the positions of the extreme left (those previously called by some “dissidents”), and that of the ecclesiastical establishment. However, that is not necessarily the case.  The Pope of Disappointments sums up the Francis papacy from the German perspective. The author, Michael Meier, is Swiss, but the Swiss and Austrian Catholic churches function as a kind of subgroup of the German Church. For many years Meier was religion editor for the Zürich Tages-Anzeiger, a left-leaning paper. (Of course, just as in the Catholic Church, previously middle-of-the-road and even conservative German media by now have been largely absorbed into the dominant progressive culture).

It is admittedly difficult for me to acclimatize myself to the Catholic progressive world view.  First, the norms of “modern” Western society are an absolute value for the German progressives. Second, their progressive faith is encapsulated in a set of specific demands, reiterated endlessly for decades now: liberty for contraception and divorce, married clergy, women clergy, full acceptance of the LGBTQ movement within the Church, and a relaxed attitude towards abortion. These demands – or “reforms” – are presented as self-evident axioms – they require no defense or explanation. Meier describes progressives as Reformkatholiken – an ideologically loaded concept from the 19^th century, Third, the focus of these reformers is relentlessly secular and political. Reforming the role of women in Church, for example, is defined as their obtaining ever more power in the institution. Finally, the entire doctrinal structure of the Church is assumed to be just a set of administrative rules, susceptible to immediate and summary change. 1)

Now what is Meier’s verdict on Francis? As the title of the book indicates,  he has not fulfilled the expectations of the Germans. Yes, Francis has opened a limited scope for divorce and the LGBTQ presence; he has advanced ecumenical relations with the non-European religions, especially Islam. But much of the liberal agenda remains unrealized. Why is this? The author attributes it to Francis’s lack of firm ideological grounding. Meier characterizes Francis a pastor, not as a principled leader or intellectual. His alleged real focus is “evangelization.”  Francis displays “mercy,” he does not change doctrine. As Meier puts it, “the two most important characteristics of the Roman Church – celibacy and the exclusion of women from ordination  – are not negotiable.” And synodality is really a meaningless concept. 

Beyond the failure of Francis to explicitly realize the “reform” agenda, the author has other specific and pointed criticisms of his papacy. Regarding sexual abuse, the author, like the progressive German establishment,  doesn’t cut the pope and the Church any slack. He is relentlessly critical of Francis’s management of this issue. Meier is also not at all pleased with the failure of Francis to assume a belligerent status with Ukraine against Russia. He further finds it dubious that Francis associates himself with other religious leaders of a more autocratic mind, such as the patriarch of Moscow or the Islamic authorities – while not immediately granting intercommunion with the Protestant churches,  It may surprise the reader to find out that, in making some of these criticisms, Meier cites authorities who view the world from a perspective entirely different from his own – like Sandro Magister. Meier does mention (citing Mosebach and Spaemann!) the authoritarian leadership of Francis: the Pope’s actions are characterized by turns and twists, by surprising initiatives and then sudden reversals.

But what is a traditionalist to make of this?

First, I think Meier s totally mistaken regarding the personal character and the method of government of Francis. Meier seems to have fallen victim to the myths created by the Vatican media machine and its affiliated secular reporters, even though he specifically criticizes their depictions of Francis! And Meier is not alone in this vision of Francis as a simple, John XXIII-like pastor. Does not Yves Chiron in his History of the Traditionalists, also describe the pope as “above all a pastor” ? Thomas Sternberg (a former  high official of the German Catholic Church) says the same in his 2019 debate with Martin Mosebach, gushing over the pope embracing disabled people in wheelchairs.

Yet this depiction is the very opposite of the truth. A cursory review of the last eleven years reveals that Francis is a man consumed by a relentless drive for control and by a radical commitment to ideology. The fact that Francis was unable to achieve at a German institution the scholastic attainments of German intellectuals, does not at all mean that he is not an ideologue. His system of thought may be crude, but it is simple, short, and can be relentlessly repeated: we must go forward, not back, cannot be rigid, doctrine evolves, the Church must welcome everyone as he is, dialogue is essential, the unity of the Church “under Peter” must be preserved. These are ideological positions –  an endlessly repeated litany that Francis hammers home on every occasion.

The author is unfair to treat Francis just as a failed implementer of the progressive vision. He has, after all, given them hitherto unimaginable forms of recognition of divorce and same-sex unions as well as a vastly expanded scope of ecumenism. Yes, Francis has not officially authorized intercommunion with Protestants, but recently he has given unprecedented, influential access within the Church to the Anglicans.  At this very moment he’s obviously working on introducing married clergy and female clergy. 

Meier is distressed by a whole series of Vatican reproofs and criticisms of the German synodal path meted out during the Francis pontificate – but haven’t developments like Fiducia Supplicans shown that these admonitions were merely tactical?  I think our author is projecting onto the entire Church a state of quasi-totalitarian control and alignment with the secular power that outside of Germany does not (yet) exist. Only in Germany and adjacent areas could the controlling powers of the Church simply decree the “reforms” that the author wants. 

Elsewhere in the Church,  Francis must contend with the fact that many Catholics believe that certain positions that have been accepted previously are articles of faith. It takes a while to bring these Catholics around to discarding that which they had only a few years ago held to be certain and holy. This explains the torturous preparation of Francis before he makes each of his moves: the synod on the family, the Amazonian synod,  the Churchwide synodal path, the questionnaires regarding the status of traditionalism in the Church. These things may seem to an objective observer transparently dishonest, which is true, but Francis judges them necessary first steps in implementing progressive reform.  Admittedly there have been reverses,  some things have been blocked or stalled, such as – so far – the introduction of married clergy and a female clergy of sorts. 

The author makes much of the confusion under the pope, and the endless discussions he has initiated, which do not immediately lead to a conclusion. But Meier does not understand that this is a technique of introducing change. By opening up to discussion so many things that recently were considered fixed and immutable, Francis softens up the Church establishment for the acceptance of change. The creation by Francis of a state of confusion does not show lack of sympathy with progressive innovations. It is a way to achieve them without triggering massive schism.

Throughout this book we read an endless series of official statements, and  commentary of German theologians on them. Outside of those holding office in the German Catholic administrative or educational establishment, the Catholic laity do not figure in this book at all. There is no mention of the deterioration in the practice of the faith among them in the last 10 years. Meier talks of the exclusion of the laity from the governance of the Church but it’s obvious what he means by “laity” are the lay bureaucrats and associates of the Church. 

I found particularly offensive  a remark, not of the author, but of Massimo Faggioli, who writes:

“It’s clear that Francis is the first truly global pope, a non-Western pope, who has freed Catholicism from the idea of a moralistic, bourgeois middle- class Catholicism, which still defined what Catholicism is.” 2)

The message from the Catholic progressives is that if you do all the Church instructs you to do,  if you sacrifice to carry on a Catholic family life in this challenging world as best you can,  you will be denounced by your priests as a conformist, a Pharisee, and a hypocrite. The contempt of the Conciliar Church establishment for the ordinary laity has rarely been so blatantly displayed. 

For Meier, liturgical questions are not even worth discussing.  He grotesquely (and incorrectly) summarizes Pope Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum as merely reintroducing anti-Semitic language in the Church. Benedict himself is caricatured as a lover of golden vestments,  a remote  authoritarian figure, and indifferent or hostile to ecumenism. 

There are many other things Meier treats only superficially or not at all. He talks of the failure of the Amazonian synod to achieve its policy objectives but does not mention the role of Cardinal Sarah and Pope Benedict.  Regarding Ukraine, does Meier really expect the pope to bless uncritically the positions of Zelensky?  For Meier to talk (citing Hubert Wolf) of pacifism not being part of the Church tradition seems audacious, to say the least, after decades of pacifist propaganda from Meier’s end of the ecclesiastical spectrum. Meier mentions Cardinal Tagle as a papal contender and a “personal favorite” of Francis  – although this gentleman had already been sidelined for unexplained reasons. 

The Pope of Disappointments witnesses to the dissatisfaction of the progressive establishment in the German-speaking world with the incomplete reform of the Church under Francis. The author predicts that things are unlikely to change, because those cardinals and bishops from the periphery that Francis has advanced are, in fact, not at all aligned with the progressive churches on many, perhaps even most issues. Indeed, the author concludes by writing that the Catholic Church may be irreformable (by that he means incapable of completely imposing progressive “reforms”). What Meier considers the deadweight of tradition will block the liberal dream from ever coming to fruition. His conclusions are quite a contrast to the relentless publicity in favor of Francis and of the church establishment that one reads every day in the Vatican and English-language Catholic media and the complicit secular media as well.

I myself had earlier described the situation of the Catholic Church after the Council  – and still, after more than ten years of Francis – as one of deadlock. In the Council the Church had institutionalized within its own bureaucratic structures a progressive movement that aims at the complete repudiation of the prior teaching of the Catholic Church on liturgy, morality, and theology. But the force of tradition, the natural reluctance of any institution to commit suicide and the residual faith of some of the hierarchy have prevented the immediate and total implementation of the progressive program. I agree with Meier that this conflict, analyzed in purely secular terms,  is most likely to continue indefinitely. 

1. A distinguishing feature of the German Church is its reliance for leadership upon professors and theologians, often associated with secular teaching institutions. Quoted throughout his book, it is they, not bishops or celebrity priests, who are the main authorities for Meier. The German church establishment further disposes of significant media assets; the author refers constantly to katholisch.de, the website of the Catholic Church in Germany (and sometimes to kath.ch, its Swiss equivalent). Much of what he writes would already be familiar to followers of these sites. 
2. Admittedly a translation of a (presumed) translation.