In Boston, the traditional Latin Mass has moved from its former home at Holy Trinity Church to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross; today’s celebration was a Low Mass in the lower church, and 101 souls attended, about as many as attended at Holy Trinity. Fr. Bernard Shea, SJ, has been a frequent celebrant of the old Mass. Holy Trinity’s music director emeritus George Krim served as organist, and the chant choir Schola Amicorum sang.
For the anniversary of the announcement of Summorum Pontificum, we sang the Oremus pro Pontifice.
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Well, this is hardly accurate. First of all, the “home” for the TLM in the Archdiocese of Boston is at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Parish in Newton, to which it was moved from Holy Trinity over a year and a half ago. The fact that some dissidents prevailed upon the administrator of that soon-to-be-closed parish to allow the TLM to return there speaks poorly about their sense of duty to cooperate with their Shepherd, Cardinal O’Malley.
The Pope’s motu proprio now allows for any congregation to request from their legitimate pastor a Mass in the Extraordinary Form. What is extant at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross is most clearly NOT in continuity with the TLM that used to be held, via the indult, at Holy Trinity – that community has moved to Mary Immaculate, with Fr. Higgins as their legitimate pastor. What is going on at the Cathedral is a motu proprio Mass, in discontinuity with the previous indult Mass, and begun as an expression of dissent from what the Cardinal had offered them.
Additionally, an honest reporter would have noted two things: first, that one of the most significant complaints of the dissenters was that the church at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes was insufficiently adorned for their needs (no altar rail, not as “pretty” as Holy Trinity, bad sight lines, etc.) Despite the fact that Fr. Higgins is installing an altar rail and reconfiguring the sanctuary according to their suggestions, they left his parish (and his legitimate leadership). It is significant that the Cathedral doesn’t have an altar rail either, and that this “praiseworthy” venue has even less decoration than Mary Immaculate (and is, in fact, in the basement).
Secondly, an honest reporter would have at least adverted to the fact that Fr. Shea is very elderly, and that even presuming his continued good health (praise God!) the “community” that gathers at the Cathedral cannot expect his service there to last indefinitely.
Finally, for all of their protestations of orthodoxy, the dissident group now at the Cathedral has no problem with allowing their Schola (and to some extent, their community decisions) to be directed by a man who is not even a Roman Catholic; he is a confessing Episcopalian!
Hi, Fr. Jim —
I hope things are going well for you in your ministry in your parish and elsewhere. I haven’t seen you for months, of course, since I don’t get out to your town much and I’m not active at the other parish where you used to help out. Come to think of it, we’ve only met in person once or twice in all these years of TLMs in Boston.
I can’t agree with your broad-brush take on the people who asked for the TLM’s restoration to Holy Trinity or the institution of a TLM at the Cathedral. Various people have preferred Holy Trinity Church or the Cathedral over Mary Immaculate of Lourdes for various reasons, such as the churches’ location, MBTA access, the possibility of attending Mass before noon, and the desire to keep the long-standing Holy Trinity parish community together as much as possible, all of which are legitimate desires.
As for me, I returned to Holy Trinity, as did most of the men singers, because the music director at MIL demanded to suppress the men’s chant schola and replace it with some other arrangement, despite having little familiarity with plainchant or even Latin. For an example, she asked before Easter, “What does ‘Haec dies’ mean?” From what I hear, the schola ended up replaced by a mixed choir that sang the propers with new and original melodies by the music director herself. Well, that’s chutzpah.
There may be some few people who disagree with Fr. Higgins about something or other, but I don’t think that’s a major factor at all in the course of events. Many of the people in the HTC/Cathedral community never switched over to attending MIL, so they are probably not even aware of any possible imperfections at MIL. And I hope there is no one so foolish, God forbid, as to think Fr. Higgins’ orthodoxy anything other than perfect.
Anyway, it’s just not reasonable to describe the congregation as a “dissident group” when the Cathedral rector has invited them and welcomed them to Holy Cross, with the encouragement of Cdl. O’Malley. You don’t really object to that, do you?
The old indult framework is gone, and there’s a certain amount of confusion about that. Now that the Motu Proprio is in force, it’s inevitable that groups of people who used to observe the TLM all together have become somewhat dispersed as the number of lawful TLM celebrations increases.
Please do let me know if you hear of any TLM celebrations up your way: the city near you isn’t really served yet, and with the presence of real dissident groups running illicit “chapels”, there’s probably an unmet need.
Interesting. I’ve been wondering why a local priest might post what looks like a bitter attack on the Cathedral’s Latin Mass community.
It appeared just a few hours after I published a notice about the disgraced Medjugorje figure Fr. Tomislav Vlasic. As it happens, the priest who decided to assail my character as an “honest reporter” is co-pastor at a parish that (despite the apparent CDF prohibition) runs trips to Medjugorje. If he decided to attack me because he was peeved over the exposure of Fr. Vlasic, he had to go back two months in the blog to find something to complain about! LOL.
Maybe somebody’s goat has been got. Maybe not. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Anyway, I’m going to exercise forbearance and remove the details that would have identified this cranky priest. Oops: just identified him.