What on earth is going on with the new administrator of Holy Trinity Parish in Boston?
Twice in a month, he's replaced the Tridentine Mass Sunday at noon -- the only such Mass in the Boston archdiocese -- with an English Mass in the new rite, due to "scheduling errors".
In the first case, the priest scheduled to celebrate the Sunday Mass did not arrive at the church at the appointed time, and a call to his rectory brought back the report that he was out of town. The administrator apologized and had a substitute offer Mass according to the new rite. But he (lacking any understanding of traditionalist issues) did so entirely in English, using the free-standing altar, facing versus populum, not using the Roman Canon. What a missed opportunity.
This past Sunday, the administrator knew a day in advance that he had a scheduling problem. Word reached parishioners, and half the congregation went to Mass elsewhere: that is, those who went at all.
If people have a choice between driving an hour for a reliable old-rite Mass in the next diocese and driving an hour for an unreliable one, they will choose the reliable one.
For over fifteen years, Holy Trinity parish has fulfilled its role of bringing about the reconciliation of disaffected traditionalist Catholics. Provoking the faithful of that parish to mistrust their pastor and - dare I say - their bishop gravely harms that mission.
Furthermore, there are now even more illicit Latin Mass groups operating in the city of Boston than there were fifteen years ago -- some of them openly sedevacantist schismatics. This is not a time to fall down on the Archdiocese's commitments to the Latin Mass community in Boston.
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