Deo gratias! Three years now in the making, after numerous discussions, endless battles with various elements within the parish about things traditional, countless hours of training and much other sacrifice and labor, our parish priest was finally able to offer Mass in the Extraordinary Form this past Tuesday night. I was not able to attend this Mass, unfortunately (mainly because I didn't know about it), but the turnout was great (50 people) and I am certain that there will be more such Masses offered in the future; I understand that our pastor wants to make it a weekly thing, which would be great.
This is a true story of victory - six years ago, before our pastor came, we had a drum-set in the choir loft, the CCW offered incense to the four winds, the priest said Mass in tye-dye, there was liturgical dancing with streamers and our parish was hundreds of thousands of dollars in the red. In six short years we have an orthodox, reverent pastor, a music director who gives us a regular does of chant, communion rails are back up, Mass is ad orientem at a neo-Gothic high altar, the Extraordinary Form is back and parishioners are very happy with the state of things - in fact, our parish is out of debt and growing monthly, so much so that some Masses are standing room only.
Click here to read a little write-up on our TLM from the Detroit Latin Mass Community. Kudos to the Most Reverend Earl Boyea, our Bishop, who not only is friendly to the Extraordinary Form, but has offered it himself many times and actually requested that our pastor do so, a request that was directly responsible for what happened at our parish last Tuesday.
Te Deum!
9 comments:
Sorry you didn't know about it. We talked about it at the KofC Beads & Brews Bonfire the weekend before.
Vivat Jesus!
Excellent News !!! We've had the TLM at my home parish for 3 weeks now and I love serving.
Gosh, wish there had been more publicity about this - we signed a petition years ago to have the TLM and would have also loved to have attended.
Congrats. In my country we only have one approved diocesan Gregorian Mass in the whole country. We are now trying to set up a Una Voce group to get things on the road. Please pray for us.
Thanks be to God! That is wonderful news.
Wow! I would love to see a post on how you went about doing this. Also too, what is the mentality of your Pastor in terms of his understanding of the importance of the Liturgy and can this be done if you don't have the support of the Bishop?
Anonymous-
I'll be working on something like this in the next week or so...I have actually already started working on it. Keep your eyes open for it, or maybe subscribe to the blog so you'll be notified when it goes up.
Pax
Awesome! That is great to hear. I am in a situation where the parish is historically liberal and we just got a new Orthodox Pastor. he is open to learning the TLM but there are a lot of concerns I have, they are basically how to implement. Basically I am interested in hearing what works and what doesn't along with what can be done if the Bishop really isn't going to support it. Also, if your Priest isn't a Trad per se and niether are most of the parishoners, how do you accomplish such a momentous task? Anyway, just wanted to give you some tid bits to think about. God Bless!
P.S. I love this blog!
Anonymous-
Thanks for the compliment! I love doing this blog. It has gone from only seven views per day to getting about 11,000 views per month this year, so it has grown!
I will do a post on this in the next week or so...it will probably be a two-parter because the process took years.
My priest is not a Trad by any stretch. The Bishop was not supportive at first, but we got a new bishop who was more so (see here:http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2011/04/bishop-boyea-says-mass-in-extraordinary.html). But, I think you can still work this out even with an unsupportive bishop...
Give me some time...I'm posting about it in the context of a broader parish renewal that went on under this pastor.
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