Tridentine Community News - The Dominican Rosary Shirine in London, England; Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News by Alex Begin (July 19, 2020):

July 19, 2020 – Seventh Sunday After Pentecost

The Dominican Rosary Shrine in London, England

Many of our readers will be familiar with Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP, a Dominican priest renowned for his skill with photography, particularly of stained glass around the world. Fr. Lawrence visited metro Detroit in April, 2018 and took pictures of some of our local historic churches. He is a master of social media, and his photographs have appeared on web sites and printed media across the globe for years.

Though he remains a world traveler – at least until the recent travel restrictions – Fr. Lawrence’s main responsibility is as a priest of London, England’s Rosary Shrine / St. Dominic’s Priory, a massive church north of central London in the Chalk Farm neighborhood. With so many lovely Catholic churches offering high-quality liturgy in London, the Rosary Shrine, in large part due to its somewhat remote location, has managed to stay under the radar for tourists and locals, but Fr. Lawrence intends to change that.


First of all, Fr. Lawrence began to celebrate the Dominican Rite Low Mass in the church’s gallery of side chapels. There are 15 chapels, one each for the 15 mysteries of the Holy Rosary. This writer has been privileged to serve Fr. Lawrence’s Low Masses there on two occasions and can vouch that the thematic decoration of those chapels is most impressive. It is not uncommon to see faithful praying the 15 decades of the Rosary as they move from one chapel to the next.


Fr. Lawrence then started a weekly Sunday 4:00 PM Dominican Rite Missa Cantata, initially at a Side Altar. A young adults’ group formed, receptions were held after Mass, and a community gradually built, in part because there was no other Traditional Mass in London at that time of day. Also, despite London’s almost incredible abundance of Latin Masses, most High Masses around town are actually Novus Ordo Latin Masses. The Rosary Shrine offered one of the few sung Traditional Masses on a Sunday, and the only one at that time of day, filling a need.

Next up the Rosary Shrine commenced a “Future Decades” campaign to raise funds for the restoration of the church. EWTN filmed a documentary about the project, The Way of Beauty, which can be viewed here: https://rosaryshrine.co.uk/ewtns-rosary-shrine-special-feature/

The Dominican Order then named Fr. Lawrence Rector of the Rosary Shrine and “General Promoter of the Rosary”, an important title and responsibility given that the Rosary was originally given by Our Lady to St. Dominic. A Rosary Garden, where the Rosary can be prayed while walking along a mini-pilgrimage path, was built in an unused area behind the church.

Recently, the Rosary Shrine began using its impressive High Altar once again for Dominican Rite Masses. The Sunday 4:00 PM Mass was moved from a Side Altar to the High Altar to accommodate the growing congregation, and a wedding Mass was recently held at the High Altar.


During the pandemic while churches were closed, Fr. Lawrence livestreamed weekly Sunday Dominican Rite Low Masses on the Facebook page of the parish, https://www.facebook.com/RosaryShrineUK. Now that public Masses have resumed, the 4:00 PM High Masses are being livestreamed.

For a media maven such as Fr. Lawrence, the parish web site just had to receive special attention. It contains a mind-bending 3D Virtual Reality Tour in the “Visit the Shrine” section. You can click on any part of a “dollhouse” view of the church and be zoomed in to any place you would like view as though you were standing there. Visit their web site to take this tour and learn more: www.rosaryshrine.co.uk.

Of course, nothing beats seeing it for yourself. We encourage you to make a pilgrimage to the Rosary Shrine on your next visit to London; it’s not far from the Belsize Park station on the subway system known as the Tube.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Tue. 07/21 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor (St. Laurence of Brindisi, Confessor & Doctor)
• Sat. 07/25 8:30 AM: Low Mass at Miles Christi (St. James the Greater, Apostle)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Albertus (Detroit), Academy of the Sacred Heart (Bloomfield Hills), and St. Alphonsus and Holy Name of Mary Churches (Windsor) bulletin inserts for July 19, 2020. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]

Tridentine Community News - Oakland County Latin Mass Association Announces New Permanent Home at Orchard Lake Seminary; Windsor Masses Resume

June 21, 2020 – External Solemnity of the Sacred Heart

Oakland County Latin Mass Association Announces New Permanent Home at Orchard Lake Seminary

What started out as a scramble to find a temporary site for Mass turned out to be a blessing in disguise. When the Academy of the Sacred Heart closed due to the pandemic and announced it would not be reopening until late June at the earliest, Fr. Miroslaw Krol, Chancellor of the Orchard Lake Schools, without hesitation welcomed the Oakland County Latin Mass Association to use the Archdiocesan Shrine of St. John Paul II, the main chapel on the expansive campus of Orchard Lake’s Ss. Cyril & Methodius Seminary. Long-term readers of this column may remember Fr. Krol as a weekend assistant at St. Josaphat Church in Detroit during the 2000s.



Over the four Sundays that the OCLMA has been at Orchard Lake, Fr. Krol, TLM celebrant and Professor of Systematic Theology Fr. Louis Madey, and Vice Rector Fr. Przemyslaw Nowak have gone out of their way to welcome and support the Traditional Mass, even going so far as to construct four outdoor altars for last Sunday’s Corpus Christi procession and arranging for a camera crew to televise the Corpus Christi Mass and procession on Catholic TV in Poland. Shot with multiple cameras and a drone providing a variety of views, it was a beautiful production of a lovely Mass and may be viewed on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dNA2R_sd-E


Attendance at the OCLMA Mass has increased steadily since the move to Orchard Lake, with members of the Polish community and other Orchard Lake regulars comprising over 100 newcomers attending the Traditional Mass on Corpus Christi. It goes without saying that being at a seminary brings benefits of its own. Fr. Krol hopes to make Orchard Lake Seminary “a center for traditional liturgy”, with training on the Extraordinary Form provided to seminarians and priests. In turn, priests in residence can provide sacramental assistance to the OCLMA. The weekly OCLMA Mass will be held on Sundays at 9:00 AM. The seminary intends to install a camera system so the Mass can be livestreamed.

We wish to extend special gratitude to the Academy of the Sacred Heart for welcoming the OCLMA to use their chapel from 2014 until now. It was and remains a beautiful edifice for the Traditional Latin Mass. Msgr. Ronald Browne remains Chaplain of the OCLMA and intends to return to celebrate Mass in the fall. [Photos of exterior of Shrine Chapel and camera crew by Cynthia Simon. Photo of procession by Patti Bickerstaff.]


Windsor Masses Resume

The Diocese of London, Ontario has allowed Masses to resume, with certain restrictions and pre-registration required. St. Benedict Masses are restarting today, June 21. See the St. Benedict web site www.windsorlatinmass.org or the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/WindsorLatinMassCommunity for more information.

Tridentine Community News - Fr. Wayne Eperley, C.S.Sp., RIP; Welcome Fr. Iwanczuk; Donations sought for livestream camera system; New Altar Missal Stand; Holy Family Church goes Ad Oriéntem once again

July 12, 2020 –Sixth Sunday After Pentecost

Fr. Wayne Epperley, C.S.Sp., RIP


Pastor of Old St. Mary’s in Detroit Fr. Wayne Epperley went to his eternal reward on Friday, July 3 at the age of 66. It was Fr. Epperley who, after 30 years of requests to his predecessors, gladly welcomed the Traditional Latin Mass, Confirmations in the Extraordinary Form, and chant workshops to this otherwise conservative church. His support for an innovative radio ad campaign has been bringing people to the TLM who never would have sought it out on their own. May his soul rest in peace.

Welcome Fr. Iwanczuk


The Archdiocese of Detroit already has one of the largest numbers of Tridentine Mass-trained celebrants of any diocese in the world, and we have just been blessed with yet another addition: Fr. Lukasz Iwanczuk, a priest of the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, has arrived to take up his new assignment as Spiritual Director of Orchard Lake’s Ss. Cyril & Methodius Seminary. Originally from Poland, Fr. Lukasz was ordained in 2015 and has celebrated Low Masses in New Jersey. After training from Extraordinary Faith he was able to take on the additional ceremonies of the Missa Cantata and has asked to be in rotation as one of the celebrants of the Oakland County Latin Mass Association’s Sunday 9:00 AM Mass at the Orchard Lake Shrine Chapel. Fr. Lukasz joins Fr. Louis Madey at Orchard Lake Seminary and Frs. Clint McDonell, Cy Whitaker, and Pieter vanRooyen at Sacred Heart Major Seminary as another faculty member at our metro Detroit seminaries who regularly offers the Extraordinary Form.

Donations Sought for Livestream Camera System

Following the success of the broadcast in Poland of this year’s Corpus Christi Mass and Procession, Orchard Lake Schools Chancellor Fr. Miroslaw Krol would like to install a permanent camera system in the Shrine Chapel to be used, among other things, to livestream the weekly Oakland County Latin Mass Association High Mass. The cost of the camera system is $18,000, and Fr. Krol has invited any who may be interested in contributing to make a check out to Orchard Lake Schools, write Shrine Chapel Camera System on the memo line, and place it in the OCLMA collection basket. Donations are, of course, tax deductible, and will not be taxed by the Archdiocese. It is worth noting that this is the first of several Tridentine-related upgrades Fr. Krol intends to make to the Shrine Chapel over the next several years; the OCLMA could not ask for a more supportive host.

New Altar Missal Stand


Every once in a while a liturgical object appears that just seems perfect for its intended duty. Most altar missal stands are either made of low quality wood or flimsy metal, too small or too large for the books they must hold, or in the case of older metal ones, tarnished or corroded. Several years ago this writer happened upon an absolutely lovely missal stand, not surprisingly at a church where everything from the lighting to the mural work is first-rate, St. Mary of the Angels in Chicago. Years later that same model of missal stand has been put back into production by, again not surprisingly, the purveyor of the highest quality church metalwork in North America, Adrian Hamers of New York. With customizable jewels in the front, solid construction, and a perfect size for Latin Mass altar missals, these stands will soon make their debut at the St. Benedict Tridentine Community and the Oakland County Latin Mass Association.

Holy Family Church Goes Ad Oriéntem Once Again


In the years following Vatican II, only one church in the Archdiocese of Detroit had the drive to continue celebrating all of their Holy Masses ad orientem: Holy Family, the Sicilian parish in downtown Detroit. Under memorable and animated pastors Fr. Noel Patacconi and Fr. John Stopponi, only the High Altar was used. In recent years under a succession of administrators, that practice had been abandoned, however with the arrival on July 1 of new administrator Fr. Paul Ward, the practice has been restored. The freestanding altar has been removed, and Masses are once again offered at the High Altar. The 9:30 AM Sunday Mass at Holy Family has long been Latin Novus Ordo, however Fr. Ward has extensive experience with the Extraordinary Form, so one can only speculate what the future will bring.

St. Catherine of Siena on how to be a successful priest

Two excerpts from the latest issue of The New Oxford Review, in which David Mills writes, in his Last Things column:

It’s St. Catherine of Siena’s feast day as I write. She was famously critical of worldly clergy. In The Dialogue, she describes them as caring about “having grand horses, many gold and silver vessels, and well-adorned homes. They have and keep what they ought not, all with huge vanity. Their heart babbles out its disordered vanity, and their whole desire is feasting, making a god of their bellies.”

Inevitably, she says, they soon fall into sexual immorality. As a famous movie director said, the heart wants what it wants. We don’t easily say no to it. He who lets his heart have the horses and homes it wants, though he intends to remain chaste, eventually lets his heart have the body it wants.

Not surprisingly, the saint continues, these priests fail as pastors: “They leave behind my little sheep, whom I had entrusted to them, like sheep without a shepherd. Spiritually they do administer the sacraments of holy Church (the power of which sacraments can neither be taken away nor lessened by any sin of theirs) but they do not feed them with sincere prayers, with hungry longing for their salvation, with holy and honorable living, nor do they feed their poor subjects with temporal assistance.”

She writes pages and pages of this. She uses the word “filth” a lot. I wonder how often she’s read in seminaries.

Also from St. Catherine: The hierarchy “will never correct persons of any importance, even though they may be guilty of greater sin than more lowly people, for fear that these might retaliate by standing in their way or deprive them of their rank and their way of living. They will, however, correct the little people, because they are sure these cannot harm them or deprive them of their rank. Such injustice comes from their wretched selfish love for themselves.”

I saw this a lot in my experiences inside the religious world, as an Episcopalian as well as a Catholic, and it was one of the most disheartening things I saw. If you want a bishop’s attention, you would do well to have a lot of money, or the ability to get it for him. If, say, your priest makes a mess of the liturgy and preaches heresy from the pulpit, the bishop might listen to the rich man’s complaints, but the poor man from the small parish has no more hope of getting the bishop’s help than I do of playing center in the NBA.

I met a friend at the pub we favor, and started working after he left. A man about my age came over. “Are you religious?” he asked. I wanted to say no, but since most people mean “Do you go to church a lot?” I said, “Fairly.” He said, “No, I said are you a religious?” and explained he’d seen me there before with a priest friend. I said no. Then he asked, “Are you Irish?” No, I said.

When I told the priest this, he wrote back, “So was he raising the stakes or trying to make you feel better for having to answer negatively? That is, is being Irish a step up or down from being a religious?”

Fr. Rutler's Weekly Column, July 5, 2020

Stalin, killer of at least 20 million people, said “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” In mid-nineteenth-century China, the civil war known as the Taiping Rebellion cost upwards of 30 million lives.

The feast of Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companions, on July 9, is a reminder that the persecution of Christian missionaries and native Chinese, begun in the mid-17th century, continues into our time. Augustine had been a soldier assigned as a prison guard for the French missionary bishop, Louis Gabriel Dufresse, whose martyrdom in Chengdu moved Augustine to request baptism, after which he became a priest and was tortured and killed in 1815. Later, in the Boxer Rebellion, 30,000 Christians would be slaughtered.

There are magnificent witnesses in China today, among whose champions is Cardinal Zen, indomitable at the age of eighty-eight. The insouciance with which some timorous Western ecclesiastics have cast a blind eye to the persecution of the Catholics in China, will be remembered as a dark blot on the history of our time.

Mao killed at least 40 million. His “Cultural Revolution,” which executed upwards of 3 million, excited mobs of youths as agents of government repression. Monuments of ancient culture were destroyed. These included nearly 7,000 priceless works of art in the Temple of Confucius alone as part of the frenzied attack on the Four Olds: Old Customs, Old Habits, Old Culture, and Old Ideas.

In our own country, the debutantish radicalism of hysterical youths whose misguided idealism makes a venomous brew when mixed with poor education, is exploited by more sinister strategists. James Madison described such mobs as: “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Young people eager to condemn the immorality of forebears, while exulting in their own undisciplined lives, recently pulled down a statue of Saint Junípero Serra. It evoked the attack on the Franciscan mission in Alta California on November 4, 1775, when 600 native warriors pierced the friar Father Luis Jayme with eighteen arrows as he called to them: “Love God, my children!”

Staff Sergeant David Bellavia, the one Iraqi combatant to receive the Medal of Honor, has said that our universities are turning out “Peter Pan” adolescents who would profit better if they joined the Army where they would be taught how to be men and women.

After the destruction of the statue of Saint Junípero Serra, the wise Archbishop of San Francisco did not engage in polemics. He simply went to the site of the vandalism and said the exorcism prayer of Saint Michael. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).

Faithfully yours in Christ,

Father George W. Rutler