Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
That’s my parish church, St. Mary’s, on the right. I’ve been a parishioner there for decades. We’ve had the Traditional Latin Mass there even before Summorum Pontificum, and it’s grown so much that of the six Sunday Masses, two are TLMs.
Rome has ordered our bishop to cease offering the TLM. We have until the Feast of St. Joseph, less than a month, before we are no longer welcome in our own parish.
I still do not know what I’m going to do.
This may sound weird, but I wonder if one could shimmy around this bad decree by offering the TLM as a funeral Mass to financially distressed Catholics.
It might not be every Sunday and it might not even be in a church building (depending on the priests fortitude) but it would be celebrated. And think of the spiritual work of mercy for the deceased!
In our bloated welfare state, many of the Church’s efforts at financial works of mercy are overshadowed by a state with deeper pockets. Not so with the end of life. Funerals and burials often hit families in the kneecaps, especially in families of middling faith where death is a taboo subject of conversation and not prepared for.
On Sunday the 11th we attended Mass in Louisiana. The pastor had booklets printed up a training tool for the new Latin Mass. The Latin was side by side with the English translation. We were really surprised; in the Arlington Virginia diocese parishes with a Latin Mass celebrated in a church have been given a deadline to close it out. Or the parish can have a Mass in Latin but it has to be celebrated in a school cafeteria or gym. This from the Pope. Bizarre! Latin is not taught any longer in the seminaries.
There are high Episopal and Anglican services that look very pre Vatican II. Of course there is no Transubstantiation. While our Roman Catholic Masses are looking rather Protestant with Protestant hymns.
St. Peter wanted the Gentile converts to Christianity circumcised. St. Paul said: “No” Circumcision was a covenant between God and His Chosen people. Vatican II was about admitting the vernacular of the people into the Mass for the people. There was nothing about removing and banning the Latin Mass for the people who understood Latin.
St. Peter wanted the Gentile converts to Christianity circumcised. St. Paul said: “No”
The difference between Saint Peter and Saint Paul was on eating with Gentiles. Saint Peter had done so with Gentile Christians and then he initially backslid in the face of opposition from some Jewish Christians. This is the point on which Saint Paul “withstood Peter to his face.”
“Funerals and burials often hit families in the kneecaps, especially in families of middling faith where death is a taboo subject of conversation and not prepared for.”
A recent sudden death in my husband’s family prompted me to look into funeral planning and prepaid arrangements. I consulted a local funeral home that advertises heavily on Catholic radio and talked to a planner who was very helpful. Still, to have the traditional funeral that is recommended for observant Catholics — burial rather than cremation, with a full funeral Mass — would cost us upward of $10,000. And that’s not counting the cost of the cemetery space, which we, fortunately, can avoid since my husband is a Navy veteran and we both qualify for burial in a national cemetery in our area. I wonder if the trend toward cremation followed by a “celebration of life” weeks or months later isn’t just due to lack of religious faith but simply because the traditional funeral is beyond the financial means of a lot of people?
That was one reason, refusal of taking away TLM in Texas, that Bishop Strickland was removed. He refused to starve his sheep.
But yes. Whatever that was, funeral service, it encapsulates the reigning popes attitude toward those who mock vs those who worship
Elaine, it’s crazy expensive now for a traditional burial. I wish they would let us bury on top (first like 15 ft down, next 10 or so). I was excited at first to see our parish respond to high costs hoping they would buy land etc for burials. No. They built a concrete holding place going at 3K a hole! Just 1k shy of the full thing here!!!