The New Liturgical Movement has some beautiful images of the Dominican Rites supplied by the Dominican Province of St Joseph in the US. As the NLM says, the images are of...
'...a Missa Cantata in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas that was celebrated according to the traditional Dominican Rite at Saint Vincent Ferrer Church in New York City on Wednesday, March 7, 2012. The celebrant for the Mass was Fr. Austin Dominic Litke, O.P., and Fr. James Dominic Brent, O.P., assistant professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America, was be the preacher. The music for the Mass was Dominican chant sung by a schola of Dominican friars.'
The thing about beautiful liturgy is that it contains a thousand homilies. What with Fr Timothy Radcliffe being both a Dominican at Blackfriars and on the rota of celebrants of Masses organised by Martin Prendergast and defended so vigorously by Terence Weldon recently in The Tablet, maybe he could introduce those attending the Soho Masses at Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory to the beauty and reverence of this Rite which certainly appears to have stood the test of time. Wow! They'd love that - absolutely love it! It would say all that the organisers wants to say to the gay community of London: "This Mass isn't about us - the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass transcends time, idenitities, sexualities, disparate communities and personalities - it is about Our Lord Jesus Christ - all that He has done for us and all He still does for us and will do for us and those who come after us, until the close of all the ages." That's what the organisers want to tell the gay community of London, after all, isn't it? Go on, Father. Give the gay Masses what the gay masses really want. You might lose some friends at The Tablet, of course, but then the service of God and His people always comes with a cost.
2 comments:
Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia, OP, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, formerly Under-Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Papa Ratzinger, is a member of the Dominican Eastern Province of St. Joseph of the USA.
I wonder how many of our priests would leave if they had to do the Old Rite mass (it won't happen of course so I ask hypothetically). How many wouldn't have become priests in the first place?. What about Fr. Tim?. I suspect it would be a significant minority and it would be all the trouble makers. The whole idea of being asked full on to offer a sacrifice on an altar would be 'over the top' to them.
And what about the 'professional Catholics'? Would we have to put up with Tina Beattie's whining?. Something tells me she would have run a mile all those years ago and not joined. And what about the Soho masses?. How many of the congregation wouldn't even go because again it was 'over the top', scared off by the explicit sacrificial character of it.
My point is that not only is the Old Rite mass a crystal clear statement on the hardest of the Church's doctrines it is also a very effective way of keeping out trouble makers, the two-faced and quislings.
Effectively we took down the Maginot line by all but getting rid of it.
BJC
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