Tridentine Community News - Spiritual Suggestions for Lent

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News by Alex Begin (February 23, 2020):

January 23, 2020 - Quinquagésima Sunday

Spiritual Suggestions for Lent

Much press is given to the meritorious practice of giving something up for Lent. We can all do without our favorite sweets or a certain enjoyable activity during this holy season. It’s also worthwhile to consider going an extra mile during Lent by making a special effort to participate in some additional spiritual activities. Here are a few suggestions:

Weekday Mass: Try to attend one of the local weekday Masses in the Extraordinary Form once per week during Lent. If you can’t make it to a Tridentine Mass, consider attending Holy Mass in the Ordinary Form at a parish which offers it in a traditional manner, such as the daily 12:15 PM Mass at Old St. Mary’s.

Spiritual Communion: On each day that you cannot receive Holy Communion, take a minute and make a Spiritual Communion. Holy Mother Church grants a Partial Indulgence for this practice. St. Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori composed the following prayer for this purpose:

My Jesus, I believe that Thou art present in the Blessed Sacrament. I love Thee above all things, and I desire Thee in my soul. Since I cannot now receive Thee sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. As though Thou wert already there, I embrace Thee and unite myself wholly to Thee; permit not that I should ever be separated from Thee. Amen.

Daily Rosary: Strive to pray the Holy Rosary every day during Lent, for an intention of your choosing. If you are able to pray the Rosary in a church, with a group or privately, you may gain a Plenary Indulgence for yourself or for the Souls in Purgatory, under the usual conditions of Confession within 20 days, reception of Holy Communion once per Plenary Indulgence sought, prayer for the Holy Father’s intentions, and freedom from attachment to sin.

Confession: Try to begin the habit of going to Confession at least once per month, if you don’t already.

Adoration: At least once per week, make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Many churches offer extended hours for this purpose, including the Stone Chapel at St. Hugo of the Hills in Bloomfield Hills, the 24/7 Adoration Chapel at the Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica in Royal Oak, and the Rosary Chapel at Assumption Church in Windsor. If you are able to spend 30 minutes in Adoration, you may gain a Plenary Indulgence under the above conditions.

Stations of the Cross: Pray the Stations at least once during Lent. If done in a church, you may gain a Plenary Indulgence under the above conditions. If you are making the devotion privately, you must physically move from station to station.

Indulgence for each Communion: Strive to gain a Plenary Indulgence for the Souls in Purgatory for each Holy Communion you receive. This is a great act of charity for souls who cannot help themselves. Praying the Rosary in a church or spending 30 minutes in Adoration are two easy ways to attain this goal.

Indulgenced Prayer Before a Crucifix: On the Fridays of Lent, the Church grants a Plenary Indulgence for the simple act of praying this prayer before a Crucifix after receiving Holy Communion, under the usual conditions. A Partial Indulgence may be gained by praying this same prayer after receiving Holy Communion at other times.

En ego, o bone et dulcíssime Jesu, ante conspéctum tuum génibus me provólvo, ac máximo ánimi ardóre te oro atque obtéstor, ut meum in cor vívidos fídei, spei et caritátis sensus, atque veram peccatórum meórum pæniténtiam, eáque emendándi firmíssimam voluntátem velis imprímere; dum magno ánimi afféctu et dolóre tua quinque vúlnera mecum ipse consídero, ac mente contémplor, illud præ óculis habens, quod jam in ore ponébat tuo David Prophéta de te, o bone Jesu: “Fodérunt manus meas et pedes meos: dinumeravérunt ómnia ossa mea.”

Behold, O kind and most sweet Jesus, I cast myself upon my knees in Thy sight, and with the most fervent desire of my soul, I pray and beseech Thee that Thou wouldst impress upon my heart lively sentiments of faith, hope, and charity, with a true contrition for my sins and a firm purpose of amendment; while with deep affection and grief of soul I ponder within myself and mentally contemplate Thy five wounds, having before my eyes the words which David the prophet put on Thy lips concerning Thee: “My hands and My feet they have pierced, they have numbered all My bones.”

On Saints’ Feast Days, Pray the Collect [Opening Prayer] from the Mass: If you have a hand missal for the Extraordinary or Ordinary Forms, on Feast Days of Saints, take a minute and pray the Collect for the day’s Mass. This practice is enriched with a Partial Indulgence.

Resolve to make the nine First Fridays or the five First Saturdays: Metro Detroit now has sites where you can conveniently attend these weekday Masses in the Extraordinary Form, for example Old St. Mary’s on First Fridays and St. Mary of Redford and Ss. Peter & Paul Westside on First Saturdays.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Tue. 02/25 7:00 PM: High Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor (St. Matthias, Apostle)
• Wed. 02/26 8:00 AM: High Mass at St. Matthew, Flint (Ash Wednesday)
• Wed. 02/26: 8:00 AM & 12:00 Noon Low Mass, 7:00 PM High Mass at St. Joseph (Ash Wednesday)
• Wed. 02/26 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Alphonsus, Windsor (Ash Wednesday)
• Sat. 02/29 8:30 AM: Low Mass at Miles Christi (Saturday After Ash Wednesday)
• Sun. 03/01: No Mass at OCLMA/Academy

[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 February 23, 2020. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]

A Christmas Reflection - 2019

It's time to reconsider the reason for the season and the challenges offered by the drive-by "experts" of the day who intend to cast the entire Biblical narrative concerning the Blessed Nativity into doubt. Consider again the Biblical narrative:

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another,

Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pas, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. (The Gospel According to Luke, Chapter Two, Verses 13-20)

Here we are again, on the first day of the Christmas season. It has become something of a Christmas tradition for me to engage the following text by C.S. Lewis in connection with the above quoted Scriptures. The reason will be obvious.

Nearly every Christmas, it seems, NEWSWEEK or TIME or some television special will feature the "latest scholarship" questioning the "authenticity" of the Christmas story. I am not concerned with the question about whether the Nativity of our Lord occurred on December 25th. That's a matter of Church tradition and incidental to my concerns here. What concerns me is how the Biblical narrative itself is invariably called into question or even dismissed as mere "myth" -- the account of the shepherds, the Angelic host, the Christ Child in a manger, the Star and the Magi from the East, Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the flight of Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child into Egypt, etc.

The scholarly authorities typically interviewed, whether Catholic or Protestant, are consistently and incorrigibly one-sided, quite thoroughly corrupted by the Humean and Kantian philosophical presuppositions undergirding the historical-critical reading of the Biblical narrative. Typical is the About.com website, where Internet browsers frequent to learn "the facts" about this or that -- a site where one finds this sort of thinking gone to seed in an article by Austin Cline, "Nativity vs Gospels: Are the Gospels Reliable About Jesus' Birth?" (About.com), where the partisan skepticism of such historical critical assumptions is abundantly evident in his suggestions that all the key ingredients of the Nativity story in the Gospels were concocted fictions of various kinds.

The lack of critical circumspection, if not patent fantasy, in all of this would be amusing if it were not so destructive. The upshot is always the same: that the Gospel writers are unreliable and not to be trusted, and certainly not to be taken at face value. Just how ludicrous this all is, however, can be seen easily by anyone with a modicum of familiarity with literature, mythology, and history. One of the best examples of a powerful antedote to this kind of foolishness -- and one I keep using because it is simple -- is a little essay by C.S. Lewis entitled "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," which is available in a collection of essays by Lewis entitled Christian Reflections (1967; reprinted by Eerdmans, 1994). The following are some excerpts from Lewis' essay, which begins on p. 152 and contains four objections (or what he calls "bleats") about modern New Testament scholarship:

1. [If a scholar] tells me that something in a Gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends and romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavour...

I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one [of the stories in the Gospel of John, for example] is like this... Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative...

2. All theology of the liberal type involves at some point - and often involves throughout - the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by his followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars... The idea that any... writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance.

3. Thirdly, I find in these theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur... This is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon 'if miraculous, unhistorical' is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the Biblical critics in the world counts here for nothing.

4. My fourth bleat is my loudest and longest. Reviewers [of my own books, and of books by friends whose real history I knew] both friendly and hostile... will tell you what public events had directed the author's mind to this or that, what other authors influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why - and when - he did everything... My impression is that in the whole of my experience not one of these guesses has on any one point been right; the method shows a record of 100 per cent failure.

The 'assured results of modern scholarship', as to the way in which an old book was written, are 'assured', we may conclude, only because those who knew the facts are dead and can't blow the gaff... The Biblical critics, whatever reconstructions they devise, can never be crudely proved wrong. St. Mark is dead. When they meet St. Peter there will be more pressing matters to discuss.

However... we are not fundamentalists... Of course we agree that passages almost verbally identical cannot be independent. It is as we glide away from this into reconstructions of a subtler and more ambitious kind that our faith in the method wavers... The sort of statement that arouses our deepest scepticism is the statement that something in a Gospel cannot be historical because it shows a theology or an ecclesiology too developed for so early a date...

Such are the reactions of one bleating layman... Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the Vicar; he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more...

Lewis, of course, was hardly a naive ignoramus. He knew all the critical objections to Christianity because for the first part of his life he was himself a confirmed agnostic. He was anything but "soft-minded," to use the Jamesian idiom. He taught philosophy at Oxford briefly before going on to teach Medieval and Renaissance literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and conclude his prolific academic career teaching at Cambridge. An account of his conversion can be found in his Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life,in which we find the following quotation:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. (emphasis added)

Lewis, an Anglican, was a man of deep Catholic habit of mind, probably because of his immersion in medieval literature; and many have wondered why he never himself crossed the Tiber. Walker Percy even compared him to Moses, who led many others to the Promised Land, though never himself crossing over. A number of books have been written about this, like Joseph Pearce's C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church,and Christopher Derrick's C.S.Lewis and the Church of Rome.The most probable reason is cultural: his father was an Ulsterman. Whatever the reason, his common sense criticisms of those Biblical "experts" who attempt to dismantle the entire Biblical narrative under the influence of Enlightenment prejudices, can be accepted with gratitude.

For further reading:

• Jesus Seminar critically examined (edited by Pertinacious Papist)
• C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections,edited by Walter Hooper.
• If you're interested in reading the relevant chapter from Lewis's book online, click on: "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism" (Lewis on Biblical Criticism, posted June 10, 2005)
• Hurd Baruch, "The Crisis in Biblical Scholarship" (New Oxford Review, December 2014).
• Mark Giszczak, "The Early Responsa of the Pontifical Biblical Commission" (Catholic bible Student, March 20, 2008)

Merry Christmas everyone!

Tridentine Christmas Masses in metro Detroit

Tridentine Masses This Christmas Week

Wednesday Dec. 25

• Wed. 12:00: Midnight orchestral High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit - Anton Diabelli's Pastoral Mass in F Major, and Hodie Christus Natus Est and Cantate domino, both by Carl Czerny.
• Wed. 12:00 Midnight: Solemn High Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Wed. 9:00 AM: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Wed. 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Christmas Day)
• Wed. 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills
• Wed. 11:00 AM: High Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Wed. 1:00 PM: High Mass St. Matthew Catholic Church, Flint
• Wed. 2:00 PM: High Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Canada

July 4th, partisan politics, Canada, and the Feast of August 15th

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, July 1, 2018):

Although I try to keep blissfully free from knowledge of some of the risible affairs euphemistically called politics, I can't remain totally uninformed or unaffected by what passes as the "news." It's a shame and an embarrassment to hear about the conniving and the accusations being flung from political pole to pole. I'll be we're the laughingstock of non-Americans worldwide. "Collusion" or "harassment" or "sex scandal," or gay "rights" or media manipulation of public opinion, and the like -- these have become some of the political "issues" in this sad moment in our country. Certainly there are other things that concern us such as crime, the economy and taxes, health care, international security, immigration, the free expression (or else abatement) of religion. For me, however, these valid and relevant concerns are so buried in the ideological ranting as to give me, if not nausea, disgust when following the daily news.

But on July 4th we manage somehow to put all these divisiveness aside and celebrate Independence Day together. It's a momentary respite in the cultural war, a kind of national truce when all or most of us can be proud patriots and observe a secular sabbath rest from the political wrangling. "One nation under God" is the phrase we utter in common, even though it has itself become a matter of contention.

While we pray together the holy rosary after all our Masses here "for God's mercy on our country," I have been adding to the intentions in my daily private prayers, "for the conversion of our people to the ways of righteousness and of Catholicism." "People" in that intention means our American people, and "righteousness" means "moral goodness." My prayer is that Americans may be delivered from the perverse ideological leanings that have caused so much ruination in our country and that they would be open to the full truth of the Catholic faith -- the one and only Christian religion founded by Christ. That's a tall order, one might say, an awful lot to tack on to one's prayer intentions. Agreed. Yet undaunted by the enormity of it I have now with even greater boldness added to this already heavily-laden intention the same prayer intention for our neighbors in Canada. This comes as a result from speaking to some Catholic Canadians recently who are smarting even more than we from the same philosophical poisons that have been dividing and corrupting us Americans. Religious liberty is seriously endangered for our friends to the north, and it is -- naturally -- the Catholic religion and its moral tenets that are the target for elimination from the governing and even from the minds of Canadians.

Would it be too much to ask you to make the mental (if not outspokenly verbal) intention in your daily prayers, "for God's mercy on our country and on Canada"? It would be a very literal and concrete way of having effective Christian charity on our "neighbor," in this case, our geographic neighbor. Over the issues that trouble and conflict Canadians we stand in a unified worry, for we are all solicitous that the rights of Christ be protected.

While the most blissful month of July is at hand when your pastor tries to forget (not you, but) some of the mundane aspects of parish business, there looms in the not-too-distant future our August 15th celebration. My simple appeal to you is to become much involved in the preparation, the events themselves, and the follow up of Assumption Day 2018. I was reminded at the recent preparation meeting for the feast day that my revered predecessor Monsignor Sawher would goad, urge, and exhort parishioners from the pulpit to take August 15th as a holiday and to clear home calendars so that the entire day could be devoted to Our Lady at the parish. Taking my cue from him I ask you to make this your day of parish involvement and pride by being present and active throughout the day, praying and assisting in the various activities. If Grotto holds a special place in your heart, this is the time to prove it in action. Although it may seem that I'm asking a great favor, the reality is that you will get the greater benefit for the investment of your time and work. Plan now to be a big part of our feast day.

Fr. Perrone

God's gift at Pentecost

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, May 20, 2018):

Pentecost. You'd be right to think that with the prefix pent- this day has something to do with the number five. It actually concerns the fiftieth day, or the seventh week, from the beginning of the harvesting of grain in Old Testament times. An agricultural feast, it had other names as well: the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of the First Fruits. It was at this time, that is, seven weeks (fifty days) since Easter, that the Holy Spirit descended upon Our Lady, the Apostles, and the other disciples of Christ. As a Christian feast it ranks higher in significance than it did for Jews since the first Christians on this day were given "power from on hight," as our Lord promised them before ascending into heaven. The "power" received was of a supernatural kind which strengthened their souls to convert the nations and to face a world that would be unwelcoming of their message. To this end they were given the grace needed to withstand opposition, and they were consoled in advance for the time when imprisonment, torture, and death for the sake of Christ would be their lot. Immediate visible signs attended the Holy Spirit's arrival: a violent wind, fiery tongues, and the much-disputed tongues by which the disciples could speak of Christ in various languages of the peoples. As it is in many places of the New Testament, Saint Peter is the champion of the day, appearing fearless and speaking with extraordinary conviction to the Jews about the new faith in Christ.

The gift of the Holy Spirit for Christians who are already baptized is not the vocalization of unintelligible babbling but the Sacrament of Confirmation which perfects the graces conferred in baptism, much as in the order of nature adulthood completes childhood. The red vestments in use this day in the Roman rite are reminiscent of the flames ('tongues') of fire that alighted upon the heads of those present on Pentecost day, and for us it is also a reminder of the blood which must sometimes be shed as the sole convincing sign to unbelievers of the truth of Christ and which won for the sufferers the highest places in heaven.

Pentecost's flames were consuming. Fire has a purifying quality which, in the spiritual sense, burns away the corrosive residue of sin by its painful heat. Our Lord's disciples had not yet known the suffering of martyrdom but the experience of Pentecost gave them the fire which consumed the self love that inhibits a consummate witness to Christ. For us, the metaphorical fire of the Holy Ghost is the purifying, toughening, and inuring of the soul against the inevitable trials, temptations to sin, and hostility to Christian truth which at times must greet every sincere witness to the Lord.

If these themes seem forbidding and weighty, one may also draw attention to the joyfulness of Pentecost as the birthday of the Church. Like Adam in the beginning of the human story who was first formed in clay and later came to birth upon receiving the breath of God's Spirit, so was the Church first formed by Christ when He promised to build it upon St. Peter's rock but fully animated with Spirit on Pentecost. It is a birthday and the cause of great happiness. (We will give full vent to our joy in the Latin mass today with the exuberant music of Bach.)

In the liturgical calendar formerly universals observed in the Latin Church, and now once again in use for the traditional Latin liturgy, Pentecost was deemed a day too great for a single day of celebration. Eight days are set aside for it to be celebrated and contemplated. I already announced that Pope Francis has designated Pentecost Monday as a commemoration of the Holy Virgin Mary as Mother of the Church. Mother of Christ on Christmas, Mother of all Christians on Pentecost -- both instances of a spiritual maternity which depended on the fertility of the Holy Ghost. There is a mysterious collaboration of Mary and the Holy Spirit both in the Son of God made man and in the making of us as other sons of God, reborn by the Holy Spirit and of Mother Church.

Fr. Perrone

Montesquieu: "The Catholic religion will destroy the Protestant religion and then the Catholics will become Protestants."

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, May 27, 2018):

Many, Many years back, I would say in the 1970s, I read something that so shocked me that I never forgot it, and from time to time would quote it in my teaching. Admitting the possibility of the memory's paraphrasing it a bit, it asserted: 'Protestantism has within it the germ of its own destruction. But by the time it destroys itself Catholicism will have become Protestant.' I wish I had noted who said that but I had not -- a fact I greatly regretted. The statement The statement shook me greatly as I had been -- even way back then -- witnessing both the disintegration of Protestantism and the temporizing of much of the religion in which I had been reared. I knew then, and I still affirm that the Catholic Church cannot ever be extinguished. Yet there is no divine guarantee that the true faith will be preserved intact everywhere until time's end. The prophecy of doom contained in that forbidding dictum may not have been entirely accurate but it contained a truth that experience could not deny Something was going wrong with the Catholic Church.

During the past week I was overjoyed after so many years, to have alighted upon that quotation once again, at least substantially. It reads somewhat variously fro the form preserved in my memory but conveys essentially its core. "The Catholic religion will destroy the Protestant religion, and then the Catholics will become Protestants." The source cited is the (Baron de) Montesquieu in a work of his titled, Spirit of the Laws (1748-50). This writing was condemned by the Church and put on her Index of Forbidden Books, yet it proved to be very influential in forming American political theory.

My purpose here is not to advance the writings of this or any other philosopher but to refer to Montesquieu's frightening prediction as an impetus for us to remain solidly grounded in the true Catholic faith which admits of no compromise with error. The Author of the Church and of her doctrines is none other than the Son of God, He who can neither deceive nor be deceived. And where this bears particular relevance is in the affirmation of profession of the Creed.

There's a corrosive tendency in our anti-intellectual times to denigrate creedal formulas (by which I mean here the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds as the prime examples). A vaguely formulated biblical creed (essentially a protestant postulate) is admired as presented as the ideal, for it shrinks from making apodictic [indisputably certain] affirmations of belief. In order to bring down the whole edifice of the Catholic Church, one need not begin at the periphery, dismantling brick by brick, but only to dislodge its foundation of stones. Such are the articles of faith enshrined in the various Creeds of the Catholic Church, first and foremost being those articles that refer to God Himself. "I believe in one God" is not an idle opening statement having little or no bearing on what follows. It is rather that without which nothing else can be asserted as true. From the "unity" of God (that is, the one God) follows the trinity of God (His threeness), and from there all the rest: the incarnation, redemption, the Church, the scaraments, grace, eternal life.

Today is Trinity Sunday, the liturgically ideal day for the priest to assert and explain to the people the foundational beliefs of the Church in the whole truth about God. That most parish priests will probably avoid delivering a dogmatic sermon for this day is as sure as the aforementioned dire prediction of Montesquieu, for many priests lead their charges away from that indispensable doctrine which alone identifies them as Catholics. An amorphous belief in Jesus, or in "the bible" is regarded as all-sufficient, even though nothing can be therein asserted as positively binding beyond barebones statements. It is this minimalism, this reductionism which is uprooting the Catholic religion from the minds of men and leaving them, at best, as Protestants.

Today when you stand up to sing or recite the Credo (Creed), do it with confidence and with an awareness of being a faithful witness to the whole edifice of that Catholic truth in which you have been baptized as Christians. It is, may I say, your moment of glory, of greatness. And, while I'm at it, I'd like to propose thatyou revive the age-old Catholic devotional practice of reciting the Creed with your daily morning prayers. Such starts the day off with that solid affirmation of truth that will steady the course of the rest of your day.

"This is our faith: it is the faith of the Church. We are proud to profess it in Christ Jesus our Lord" (from the Rite of Baptism).

Fr. Perrone

An important footnote: Next Sunday is Corpus Christi Sunday (either a replication, in the Tridentine calendar, or a transfer in the new calendar), a feast which more properly belongs to this Thursday. The Latin Tridentine Mass net Sunday will not be at the 9:30 but at noon where it will be followed by the Eucharistic Procession, that splendid demonstration of Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Our fearsome ushers will be at the ready to offer you, for a nominal price, a light lunch after the Procession (weather permitting).

Don't forget: Ascension Thursday this week! Tridentine Masses coming this week to metro Detroit and east Michigan

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Sunday

• Sun. 7:30 AM and 10:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 45 minutes before and after Masses) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sun. 8:00 and 10:30AM Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sun. 9:00 AM: Low Mass at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Sun. 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Sun. 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills
• Sun.: [occasional Tridentine Masses: contact parish] at Our Lady of the Scapular Parish
• Sun. 11:00 AM: Solemn High Mass at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Sun. 12:00: High Mass at St. Mary Star of the Sea, Jackson
• Sat. 12:30 PM (2nd Sundays): Tridentine Mass at Old St. Patrick's, Ann Arbor
• Sun. 2:00 PM (1st Sundays only):St. Alphonsus Church, Windsor, Canada
• Sun. 2:00 PM (every Sunday except 1st): High Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Canada
• Sun. 3:00 PM (2nd and 4th Sundays): Tridentine Mass (call ahead for Confession times, 989-892-5936) at Infant of Prague, Bay City [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sun. 3:00 PM: High Mass St. Matthew Catholic Church, Flint

Monday

• Mon. 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Mon. 8:00 AM: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Mon. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions by appointment) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Mon. 12:00 Noon: High Tridentine Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit

Tuesday

• Tue. 7:00 AM Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Tue. 8:00 AM: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Tue. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions by appointment) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Tue. 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Canada

Wednesday

• Wed. 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Wed. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions by appointment) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Wed. 12:00 Noon: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit followed by Perpetual Novena to St. Joseph

Thursday (Ascension Thursday)

• Thu. 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Ascension Thursday)
• Thu. 8:00 AM: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit (Ascension Thursday)
• Thu. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions Thursdays: 7:00 - 7:30 PM during Benediction) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]* (Ascension Thursday)
• Thu. 7:00 PM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Ascension Thursday)
• Thu. 7:00 PM: Solemn High Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit (Ascension Thursday)
• Thu. 7:00 PM: High Mass at Our Lady of the Scapular Parish (Ascension Thursday)

Friday

• Fri. 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Fri. 8:00 AM: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Fri. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM during Holy Hour) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Fri. 7:00 PM (First Fridays only): Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Fri. 7:00 PM (1st Fridays only): High Mass at Old St. Mary's, Greektown, Detroit
• Fri. 7:00 PM: Tridentine Mass at St. Joseph, Sarnia, Ontario
• Fri. 7:00 PM (after 6:00 PM Holy Hour, 1st Fridays only): High Mass at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit

Saturday

• Sat. 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• 8:00 AM (1st Saturdays): Low Mass at St. Edward on the Lake, Lakeport
• Sat. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sat. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sat. 8:30 AM: Low Mass at Miles Christi, South Lyon, MI
• Sat. 9:00 AM (1st Saturdays): High Mass at St. Anthony, Temperance
• Sat. 9:00 AM: Low Mass and Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Sat. 6:00 PM: Tridentine Mass at SS. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Catholic Church, Sterling Heights

* NB: The SSPX chapels among those Mass sites listed above are posted here because the Holy Father has announced that "those who during the Holy Year of Mercy approach these priests of the Fraternity of St Pius X to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins," and subsequently extended this privilege beyond the Year of Mercy. These chapels are not listed among the approved parishes and worship sites on archdiocesan websites.

Fr. George Rutler on the Resurrection, a "curious absurdity" to the pagans

Fr. Rutler's Weekly Column

April 1, 2018
We know directly from Saint Paul that Greek philosophers thought the Resurrection was a curious absurdity. Politicians more pragmatically feared that it would upset the whole social order. One of the earliest Christian “apologists,” or explainers, was Saint Justin Martyr who tried to persuade the emperor Antoninus Pius that Christianity is the fulfillment of the best intuitions of classical philosophers like Socrates and Plato.

Justin was reared in an erudite pagan family in Samaria, in the land of Israel just about one lifetime from the Resurrection. Justin studied hard and accepted Christ as his Savior, probably in Ephesus, and then set up his own philosophical school in Rome to explain the sound logic of the Divine Logos. Refusing to worship the Roman gods, and threatened with torture by the Prefect Rusticus, he said: “You can kill us, but you cannot hurt us.” Then he was beheaded.

Fast forward almost exactly a thousand years, and another philosopher, Bernard of Chartres, also admired the best of the Greek philosophers and coined the phrase “We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” There had been long centuries without much effort to explain the mystery of the Resurrection with luminous intelligence. In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton would describe himself the same way. Being intellectual dwarfs may sound pessimistic, but there was also optimism in the fact that, lifted on the shoulders of giants, they could see even farther than the giants themselves. In witness to that, less than fifty years after Bernard died, building began on the great cathedral of Chartres. The magnificent rose window in the south transept depicts the evangelists as small men on the shoulders of the tall prophets. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are closer to Christ in the center of the window, than Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel who lift them up, seeing in fact what the prophets had longed for in hope.

The Risen Christ is neither a ghost nor a mere mortal. Ancient philosophies could be vague about things supernatural, and ancient cults could be distant from personal conduct. The Resurrection unites ethics and worship. The famous letter of an anonymous contemporary of Justin Martyr, meant to be read by the emperor Marcus Aurelius, said that the way Christians live “has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines.”

The Resurrection was the greatest event in history, and unlike other events that affect life in subsequent generations in different degrees by sequential cause and effect, the Resurrection is a living force for all time, making Christ present both objectively in the Sacraments, and personally in those who accept him. Thus, indifference to the Resurrection is not an option. The future life of each one of us depends on a willingness to be saved from eternal death.

Recipe for a more profitable Holy Week

Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, March 25, 2018):

Directions for a more profitable Holy Week:

Save this page and thoughtfully read over the following quotations every day:

• "You will all fall away because of Me this night." (Mt 26:31)
• "Even if I must die with You, I will not deny You." (Mt 26:35)
• "You will deny Me three times." (Mt 26:34)
• "What will you give me if I hand Him over to you?" (Mt 26:15)
• "I have sinned in betraying innocent Blood" (Mt 27:4)
• "Jesus offered up prayers ... with loud cries and tears." (Heb 7:7)
• "I thirst." (Jn 19:28)
• "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." (Lk 23:34)
• "My God, my God, why have You abandoned Me?" (Mt 27:46)
• "When they had mocked Him, they stripped Him." (Mt 27:31)
• "A Lamb led to the slaughter." (Is 53:7)
• "When I am lifted up, I will draw all men to Myself." (Jn 12:32)
• "Behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the Savior of the world." (Antiphon, Good Friday)
• "Let us go to die with Him!" Jn 11:16)
• "If we die with Christ, we shall live with Him." (2 Tim 2:11)
• "Let a man deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me." (Mt 16:24)
• "Where I am, there will My servant be." (Jn 12:26)
• "God forbid that such a thing should happen to You!" (Mt 16:22)
• "My soul is sad, even unto death." (Mt 26:38)
• "Christ became obedient for us, even unto death, dying on a cross." (Phil 2:8)
• "They spat on Him and struck Him." (Mt 27:30)
• "Father, let this cup pass Me by." (Mt 26:39)
• "The cross is foolishness to those headed for ruin." (1 Cor 1:18)
• "Now judgment has come upon this world." (Jn 12:31)
• "You will all leave Me." (Jn 16:32)
• "They pierced My hands and My feet." (Ps 22:16)
• "My one companion is darkness." (Ps 88:18)
• "By Your blood You purchased people for God." (Rev 5:9)
• "By Your holy cross You have redeemed the world." (Stations of the Cross)
• "Could you not keep watch with Me one hour?" (Mt 26:26, 28)
• "The Lamb has been sacrificed." (1 Cor 5:7)
• "I trod the winepress alone." (Is 63:3)
• "Golgotha -- the place of the skull." (Mt 27:33)
• "They shouted all the more, 'Crucify Him!'" (Mk 15:13)
• "His sweat became as great drops of blood." (Lk 22:44)
• "They jeered at Him." (Mk 5:40)
• "His face was so marred beyond human likeness." (Is 52:14)
• "I offered My back to the smiters." (Is 50:61)
• "A soldier pierced His side." (Jn 19:34)
• "This Jesus ... whom you crucified." (Acts 3:36)
• "I have forgotten what peace is." (Lm 3:17)
• "He was bruised for our offenses." (Is 53:4)

The Magi and Star in Old Testament prophecies

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, January 7, 2018)

The wonders of Epiphany seem never to end for me. I thought I had pretty well combed this fascinating story with its menacing subplot in years past. It is a narrative replete with supernatural unfolding and malicious intrigue. Here are a few "new" things about Epiphany that I never considered before, as far as I can recall, in my sermons of years past.

The Magi. It's become theologically "correct" not to speak of the three "kings" since nowhere in the Gospel are they said to be kings, but rather magi ("wise men" would be an acceptable expression). They may have been mere governors of some small eastern lands. However, there is a prophecy from (Vulgate) Psalm 71 which indicates that "Kings of Tarshish and the Isles shall offer gifts; the kings of Arabia and Seba shall bring tribute. All kings shall pay homage, all nations shall serve Him." In keeping to this term "kings" we see a drama unfolding among the various kings: these magi "kings," King Herod, and the King-of-Kings, Christ. The number of magi is not specified in the Gospel. Three is taken to be their number on account of their three gifts. It may have been that several such men each brought with him the three gifts, rather than one gift by each of three. Magi they were nevertheless, that is, men who studied the heavens for knowledge. They must have known the Hebrew scriptures and the prophesies about the birth of their Messiah as well since they will ask upon their arrival in Jerusalem about the whereabouts of the newborn king of the Jews. It's remarkable that these men would have simultaneously had knowledge of who Christ was (Messiah, Son of God and man), and the time of His birth, and had met each other from their various lands and made their united way to Judea to see Christ. It's probable that angels informed them of all these things, though the scriptures are silent on this. The appearance of the star gave the men the direction needed for their way.

The Star. In the Book of Numbers there is a prophecy: "A star shall advance from Jacob (=Israel)" and in Isaiah it is told that by Jerusalem's light kings would walk (Is. 60), bearing gold and frankincense, and that caravans of camels would fill the land. The idea of a light leading people on a journey is familiar from the Exodus wherein God guided the path of the people through the desert either by a cloud or by a pillar of fire. That was a miraculous light. Similarly, one may reason that the star leading the magi was a miraculous star, made for the purpose, and not one of the existing heavenly bodies, a star which shone both day and night and whose light moved indicating direction. In the end, the star "stood over the place" where the infant was.

Bethlehem. It was another prophecy, from Micah, that identified Bethlehem as the birth place of the Messiah to be. (One might have otherwise thought it to be Jerusalem.) It's a marvel to contemplate that Mary and Joseph journeyed to Bethlehem only on account of a decree of Caesar Augustus -- a pagan -- ordering a census, without which our Lord's birth would have taken place in Nazareth, according to the natural course of events.

Faith. The magi had Christian faith: they adored Christ. It had to be by a divine revelation (by an angel?) that they know the identity of this Infant. This faith led them to great acts: leaving home, parting with their treasures to serve as gifts, traveling goodly distances, and adoring the God-man upon seeing Him.

Other things. The visit of the magi certainly must have included much talk among all persons in the cave. None of this has been recorded. One wonders about what was said and done those days (one presumes a stay of some days after the journey). We would like to now some of that holy conversation.

While the Star has dissolved, the light of the Catholic faith with all its guiding truth remains for us. Our Lady too is a star, the Star of the Sea, who shows us the sure way to Christ. The star's progression to Bethlehem is a lesson about the advancement in faith -- from first beginnings even unto spiritual perfection by practicing the virtues. In this sense, the Epiphany story is replicated in every Christian's life.

Fr. Perrone

A Christmas Reflection

It's time to reconsider the reason for the season and the challenges offered by the drive-by "experts" of the day who intend to cast the entire Biblical narrative concerning the Blessed Nativity into doubt. Consider again the Biblical narrative:

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another,

Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pas, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. (The Gospel According to Luke, Chapter Two, Verses 13-20)

Here we are again, on the first day of the Christmas season. It has become something of a Christmas tradition for me to engage the following text by C.S. Lewis in connection with the above quoted Scriptures. The reason will be obvious.

Nearly every Christmas, it seems, NEWSWEEK or TIME or some television special will feature the "latest scholarship" questioning the "authenticity" of the Christmas story. I am not concerned with the question about whether the Nativity of our Lord occurred on December 25th. That's a matter of Church tradition and incidental to my concerns here. What concerns me is how the Biblical narrative itself is invariably called into question or even dismissed as mere "myth" -- the account of the shepherds, the Angelic host, the Christ Child in a manger, the Star and the Magi from the East, Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the flight of Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child into Egypt, etc.

The scholarly authorities typically interviewed, whether Catholic or Protestant, are consistently and incorrigibly one-sided, quite thoroughly corrupted by the Humean and Kantian philosophical presuppositions undergirding the historical-critical reading of the Biblical narrative. Typical is the About.com website, where Internet browsers frequent to learn "the facts" about this or that -- a site where one finds this sort of thinking gone to seed in an article by Austin Cline, "Nativity vs Gospels: Are the Gospels Reliable About Jesus' Birth?" (About.com), where the partisan skepticism of such historical critical assumptions is abundantly evident in his suggestions that all the key ingredients of the Nativity story in the Gospels were concocted fictions of various kinds.

The lack of critical circumspection, if not patent fantasy, in all of this would be amusing if it were not so destructive. The upshot is always the same: that the Gospel writers are unreliable and not to be trusted, and certainly not to be taken at face value. Just how ludicrous this all is, however, can be seen easily by anyone with a modicum of familiarity with literature, mythology, and history. One of the best examples of a powerful antedote to this kind of foolishness -- and one I keep using because it is simple -- is a little essay by C.S. Lewis entitled "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," which is available in a collection of essays by Lewis entitled Christian Reflections (1967; reprinted by Eerdmans, 1994). The following are some excerpts from Lewis' essay, which begins on p. 152 and contains four objections (or what he calls "bleats") about modern New Testament scholarship:

1. [If a scholar] tells me that something in a Gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends and romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavour...

I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one [of the stories in the Gospel of John, for example] is like this... Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative...

2. All theology of the liberal type involves at some point - and often involves throughout - the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by his followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars... The idea that any... writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance.

3. Thirdly, I find in these theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur... This is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon 'if miraculous, unhistorical' is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the Biblical critics in the world counts here for nothing.

4. My fourth bleat is my loudest and longest. Reviewers [of my own books, and of books by friends whose real history I knew] both friendly and hostile... will tell you what public events had directed the author's mind to this or that, what other authors influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why - and when - he did everything... My impression is that in the whole of my experience not one of these guesses has on any one point been right; the method shows a record of 100 per cent failure.

The 'assured results of modern scholarship', as to the way in which an old book was written, are 'assured', we may conclude, only because those who knew the facts are dead and can't blow the gaff... The Biblical critics, whatever reconstructions they devise, can never be crudely proved wrong. St. Mark is dead. When they meet St. Peter there will be more pressing matters to discuss.

However... we are not fundamentalists... Of course we agree that passages almost verbally identical cannot be independent. It is as we glide away from this into reconstructions of a subtler and more ambitious kind that our faith in the method wavers... The sort of statement that arouses our deepest scepticism is the statement that something in a Gospel cannot be historical because it shows a theology or an ecclesiology too developed for so early a date...

Such are the reactions of one bleating layman... Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the Vicar; he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more...

Lewis, of course, was hardly a naive ignoramus. He knew all the critical objections to Christianity because for the first part of his life he was himself a confirmed agnostic. He was anything but "soft-minded," to use the Jamesian idiom. He taught philosophy at Oxford briefly before going on to teach Medieval and Renaissance literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and conclude his prolific academic career teaching at Cambridge. An account of his conversion can be found in his Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life,in which we find the following quotation:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. (emphasis added)

Lewis, an Anglican, was a man of deep Catholic habit of mind, probably because of his immersion in medieval literature; and many have wondered why he never himself crossed the Tiber. Walker Percy even compared him to Moses, who led many others to the Promised Land, though never himself crossing over. A number of books have been written about this, like Joseph Pearce's C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church,and Christopher Derrick's C.S.Lewis and the Church of Rome.The most probable reason is cultural: his father was an Ulsterman. Whatever the reason, his common sense criticisms of those Biblical "experts" who attempt to dismantle the entire Biblical narrative under the influence of Enlightenment prejudices, can be accepted with gratitude.

For further reading:

• Jesus Seminar critically examined (edited by Pertinacious Papist)
• C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections,edited by Walter Hooper.
• If you're interested in reading the relevant chapter from Lewis's book online, click on: "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism" (Lewis on Biblical Criticism, posted June 10, 2005)
• Hurd Baruch, "The Crisis in Biblical Scholarship" (New Oxford Review, December 2014).
• Mark Giszczak, "The Early Responsa of the Pontifical Biblical Commission" (Catholic bible Student, March 20, 2008)
• J. C. O'Neill, The Bible's Authority: A Portrait Gallery of Thinkers from Lessing to Bultmann(T. & T. Clark Publishers, 1991) - fantastic book offers a critical and scholarly overview of Bible deconstructionists and their abusive use of the historical-critical hermeneutic.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Tridentine Masses coming Christmas week to metro Detroit and eastern Michigan

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Sunday (Fourth Sunday in Advent, Christmas Eve)

• Sun. 7:30 AM and 10:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 45 minutes before and after Masses) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sun. 8:00 and 10:30AM Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sun. 9:00 AM: Low Mass at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Sun. 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Sun. 9:45 AM: High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills
• Sun.: [occasional Tridentine Masses: contact parish] at Our Lady of the Scapular Parish
• Sun. 11:00 AM: Solemn High Mass at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Sun. 12:00: High Mass at St. Mary Star of the Sea, Jackson
• Sat. 12:30 PM (2nd Sundays): Tridentine Mass at Old St. Patrick's, Ann Arbor
• Sun. 2:00 PM (1st Sundays only):St. Alphonsus Church, Windsor, Canada
• Sun. 2:00 PM (every Sunday except 1st): High Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Canada
• Sun. 3:00 PM (2nd and 4th Sundays): Tridentine Mass (call ahead for Confession times, 989-892-5936) at Infant of Prague, Bay City [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sun. 3:00 PM: High Mass St. Matthew Catholic Church, Flint

Monday (Christmas Day)

• Mon. Dec. 25, 12:00 Midnight: Solemn High Orchestral Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit -- Christmas Carol Singing begins at 11:30 PM; Haydn's Paukenmesse and Schubert's Magnificat will be performed for Mass
• Mon. Dec. 25, 12:00 Midnight: Solemn Mass at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit -- Choir will sing Solemn Mass in A by César Franck
• Mon. Dec. 25, 12:00 Midnight: High Mass at St. Edward on the Lake, Lakeport
• Mon. Dece. 25, 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions by appointment; call to check Christmas schedule) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Mon. Dec. 25, 9:00 AM: Low Mass at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Mon. Dec. 25, 9:30 AM: Tridentine Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit without choir or orchestra
• Mon. Dec. 25, 9:45 AM: Solemn High Mass at OCLMA/Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills -- Choir will sing Missa Sancti Nicolai by Haydn
• Mon. Dec. 25, 11:00 AM: Solemn High Mass of the Day at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Mon. Dec. 25, 2:00 PM: High Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor, Canada -- St. Benedict Tridentine Community Choir will sing Missa Sancti Nicolai by Haydn
• Mon. Dec. 25, 6:00 PM: Vespers and Benediction at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit

Tuesday

• Tue. 7:00 AM Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Tue. 8:00 AM: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Tue. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions by appointment) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Tue. 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Canada

Wednesday

• Wed. 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Wed. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions by appointment) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Wed. 12:00 Noon: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit followed by Perpetual Novena to St. Joseph

Thursday

• Thu. 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Thu. 8:00 AM: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Thu. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions Thursdays: 7:00 - 7:30 PM during Benediction) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*

Friday

• Fri. 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Fri. 8:00 AM: Low Mass St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Fri. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM during Holy Hour) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Fri. 7:00 PM (First Fridays only): Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• Fri. 7:00 PM (1st Fridays only): High Mass at Old St. Mary's, Greektown, Detroit
• Fri. 7:00 PM: Tridentine Mass at St. Joseph, Sarnia, Ontario
• Fri. 7:00 PM (after 6:00 PM Holy Hour, 1st Fridays only): High Mass at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit

Saturday

• Sat. 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• 8:00 AM (1st Saturdays): Low Mass at St. Edward on the Lake, Lakeport
• Sat. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM) at St. Joseph's Church, Ray Township [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sat. 8:00 AM: Low Mass (Confessions 1/2 hour before Mass: call beforehand) at St. Ann's Church, Livonia [NB: See note at bottom of this post about SSPX sites.]*
• Sat. 8:30 AM: Low Mass at Miles Christi, South Lyon, MI
• Sat. 9:00 AM (1st Saturdays): High Mass at St. Anthony, Temperance
• Sat. 9:00 AM: Low Mass and Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help at St. Joseph Oratory, Detroit
• Sat. 6:00 PM: Tridentine Mass at SS. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Catholic Church, Sterling Heights

* NB: The SSPX chapels among those Mass sites listed above are posted here because the Holy Father has announced that "those who during the Holy Year of Mercy approach these priests of the Fraternity of St Pius X to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation shall validly and licitly receive the absolution of their sins," and subsequently extended this privilege beyond the Year of Mercy. These chapels are not listed among the approved parishes and worship sites on archdiocesan websites.

Tridentine Community News - Franciscan Priest Celebrates First Tridentine Mass; Chicago Bus Tour Tridentine Mass Schedule; Christmas Mass Schedule; First Friday and First Saturday Tracker Holy Cards; Tridentine Massses 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 (December 17, 2017):

Franciscan Priest Celebrates First Tridentine Mass

Franciscan Priest Celebrates First Tridentine Mass


The first priest to be ordained for the new, Phoenix-based Franciscan Friars of Holy Spirit just this past June, Fr. Athanasius Fornwalt, FHS, celebrated his first Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form at Old St. Mary’s Church on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Fr. Athanasius is studying at Detroit's Sacred Heart Major Seminary and took advantage of Extraordinary Faith’s celebrant training program. He serves as Post-Novitiate Director for his order, overseeing men receiving their formation at Sacred Heart Seminary. Widely traveled, Fr. Athanasius has formerly served as one of the Masters of Ceremony at Washington, DC’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. We hope to see him celebrating Tridentine Masses for us around the region in upcoming months.

Chicago Bus Tour Tridentine Mass Schedule

The times of the Traditional Latin Masses on this year’s Chicago Church Bus Tour have been finalized. Everyone is invited to attend these Masses if you will be in the Chicago area, whether or not you are registered on the tour:

• Thursday, December 28: 3:00 PM High Mass at St. Mary of the Angels Church
• Friday, December 29: 11:30 AM High Mass at St. John Cantius Church
• Saturday, December 30: 5:00 PM Solemn High Mass at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church. The parish has asked us to hold this Mass at the time of their Saturday Vigil Mass, to expose their parishioners to the Extraordinary Form.

There are still a few seats left on the bus for those interested in the full tour. Contact Prayer Pilgrimages for more information at (248) 250-6005.

Christmas Mass Schedule

Many Tridentine Mass sites in our area will be holding Christmas Day Masses. Those that have been announced thus far are:

• St. Joseph: 12:00 Midnight, 9:00 AM [Low Mass], 11:00 AM
• St. Edward on the Lake, Lakeport: 12:00 Midnight
• Assumption Grotto: 12:00 Midnight, and 9:30 AM [verified]
• Oakland County Latin Mass Association at the Academy of the Sacred Heart Chapel: 9:45 AM
• St. Benedict Tridentine Community at Holy Name of Mary Church, Windsor: 2:00 PM

First Friday and First Saturday Tracker Holy Cards


Every once in a while a simple concept comes to fruition that makes you wonder, “Why didn’t someone think of this before?” In the December Fraternity of St. Peter Meménto newsletter mailing, two cards were included that allow one to track one’s progress in making the nine First Friday and five First Saturday devotions. Graces are attached to those who persist in attending Holy Mass and performing the prescribed works on successive First Fridays and First Saturdays; this is the first instance of a convenient means of recordkeeping being made widely available. It is possible that additional copies of these cards may be obtained by contacting the FSSP. Their Meménto newsletter is available free of charge by signing up at: https://fssp.com/subscribe/

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 12/18 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Feria)
• Tue. 12/19 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Our Lady of the Scapular (Feria) – Candlelit Mass
• Tue. 12/19 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor (Feria)
• Thu. 12/21 4:30 PM: High Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle, Ann Arbor (St. Thomas, Apostle) – Baptism of Lucy Rose Schultz in the Extraordinary Form follows Mass
• Sat. 12/23 7:00 AM: Low Mass at St. Matthew, Flint (Ember Saturday) – Candlelit Mass
• Sat. 12/23 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Our Lady of the Scapular (Feria) – Candlelit Mass
• Sat. 12/23 8:30 AM: Low Mass at Miles Christi (Ember Saturday)

[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 December 17, 2017. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]

Why traditional Catholic devotions are disappearing even from traditional parishes

One problem is that most traditional parishes tend to be "commuter parishes," whose members live at considerable distance from the churches. But listen in as a trusted pastor discusses the challenge today:

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, November 12, 2017)

I've been toying with the idea of dropping the annual parish Forty Hours Devotion, beginning next year. The reason would only be lack of patronage. Grotto has offered this period of Eucharistic adoration for as long as anyone can remember. The Forty Hours Devotion reflects a time in the Archdiocese when this was practiced in every parish in its turn. The effect diocese-wide was that somewhere and at all times there was Eucharistic exposition. A lot has happened since those more reverent times. For one thing, Vatican Ii happened and this worldwide devotion was more or less dropped in favor of an indeterminate annual "Eucharistic day" which every parish was encouraged to host. With the decrease of Eucharistic devotion this became a dead letter in most places, though Grotto carried on with the Forty Hours. Suddenly there arose a wave of adoration in special parish chapels where the Blessed Sacrament would be exposed for some hours daily or even around the clock. A boon to adoration this was indeed, but it generally rendered those Eucharistic Days and the Forty Hours superfluous. While several parishes in the archdiocese have adoration chapels, there are almost none that have solemn public days of adoration, let alone the Forty Hours.


Forty Hours procession at St. John Cantius in Chicago
Another factor in the demise of the Forty Hours Devotion was the diminishing number of Catholic schools and the ruination of once highly Catholic neighborhoods around their parishes. The once tighly knit communities that gave rise to the parishes were a boon to adoration of the Holy Sacrament. Distances to the churches then were short and the presence of children in the parish schools supplied a steady stream of adorers.

We've had our parish adoration chapel going for nearly as long as I have been pastor. At one time we had less of a difficulty filling time slots for adoration. We barely succeed in having sufficient worshippers, but their number is small. Our people live far away from the parish and often have access to adoration places closer to home than Assumption Grotto Church. (Most people, however, do not practice a weekly holy hour of adoration.)

In the heyday, Forty Hours was a special celebration for a parish. There were processions and litanies. Altar boys in groups of two were assigned half-hour periods of adoration. A banner was placed over the front church doors of the church which announced to the neighborhood that this was the time of Forty Hours. Sermons on the Holy Eucharist were given. People came in great numbers to the solemn closing ceremony, and dozens of priests participated in it, followed or preceded by a grand dinner for the priests which was a confirmation of priestly fraternity. We have limped on with the Forty hours for a long time through interest wand attendance for it have been dwindling.

There is a Church law which forbids the Holy Eucharist to remain exposed without adorers being present. I'm not wholly sure that this has been honored all the time. Sometimes I or Fr. John or some single person have been the only ones present at a given time.

Having given all that preliminary information, I will assess the success of this year's Forty Hours. I do believe that it gives honor and glory to God, but only if there are people present doing the praying and adoring the Lord.


Forty Hours closing Mass at the London Oratory
Today [Nov. 12th] at the noon Mass we will have the solemn ceremonial as prescribed by the Forty Hours ritual. I hope the three days will be a success and warrant our continued practice of this venerable custom. If not, we will have to bid the Forty Hours Devotion a sad but fond farewell. It had nourished Eucharistic piety in the people of this parish for many generations. Let us see in what direction we must head in the years to come.

Fr. Perrone: Why pray for the dead?

Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, November 5, 2017):

What we know about life after death pales in comparison with what we do not know. There are so many unanswered questions. Our Lord Himself spoke of the next life in similes, leaving us to glean a literal understanding from the imagery therein. Although the church has officially said relatively little about the souls of the deceased as being in this world (think of ghosts, apparitions of and licit communications with the dead through prayer), we have some hints that the matter may be much more complex than the little doctrinal surety we have about these matters. Upon the death of our Lord, for example, it is written that many holy souls arose from their graves and appeared to many on earth (Mt. 27:53). In our time we have testimony from a convincing number of persons who have had 'near death' experiences in which their souls seem to have hovered over and about their not-quite-yet-dead bodies. How much is fantasy, how much deception, how much undefined truth is unsure. Our doctrinal certainty on the condition of the dead is rather succinct: after the particular judgment there is heaven, or hell, or purgatory. The rest is not specified.

Holy Church however has always prayed for the souls of the faithful departed, that is, for those who were once living members of the Church on earth but who may now, after death, be in need of our prayers. Canonized saints are excluded from this prayer since it is certain that they have successfully achieved their place and their state cannot improve. Likewise, the souls of the damned cannot be ransomed by any degree of supplication for them. Only the souls of the dead in purgatory can profit from our Masses, indulgences, and other prayers and good works offered for their amelioration.


At one time in rather recent history -- before Vatican II -- Catholics had a more manifest devotion to the "poor souls" in purgatory. Ever since the near demise of the Requiem Mass (the Mass for the dead, revived only ten years ago by Pope Benedict XVI by permitting the return of the traditional Latin Mass), Catholics seem to have forgotten that purgatory is a solemnly proclaimed dogma of the Church (which, therefore, no Catholic can deny and yet remain a Catholic) and that Masses and prayers for the dead are a real benefit to those in purgatory, enabling them to be released the sooner from the just punishments they suffer as a result of their sins. (For the uninformed: the daily black vestment Requiem Mass was a common occurrence before the Council; there were in some churches so-called 'privileged altars' where indulgences for the dead were secured; litanies and other prayers for the dead were commonly recited; and people customarily arranged for Masses to be said for their beloved deceased.) With the loss of the doctrinal instruction, today's modern Catholics have the erroneous assumption that nearly everybody goes directly to heaven after death. Given the infallibility of the Church's dogma regarding the existence of purgatory it would be at least negligent, if not cruel, to omit praying for the souls detained in this transcendent 'prison' (cf. Mt 5:25). How many of our beloved may be in need of assistance from the church on earth? With the facile dismissal of the doctrine of purgatory that help will not be forthcoming.


This entire month is set aside to remember the dead and to alleviate their sufferings. It has been estimated that the pains of purgatory are more intense than any known in this life. When one considers the excruciating possibilities of present pains, that's a staggering amount. Charity ought to motivate us to assist souls who have no means to help themselves.

God in His mercy provided a place of temporary punishment for sin which we call purgatory. Let us be grateful that we can help the poor souls by our works.

This weekend our parish will have the 40 Hours of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. We open this on Friday after the 7:30 Mass until 7:00 p.m. It continues on Saturday after the 7:30 a.m. Mass until 7:00 p.m. Next Sunday adoration takes place only in short intervals between Masses and concludes with the solemn high Mass at noon, followed by the procession with the Blessed Sacrament. Plan this weekend on being in church for one hour of prayer besides your usual weekend Mass time.

Fr. Perrone

Dueling feastdays

"Why did Pope Pius XI, when he established the Feast of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ with his encyclical Quas Primas un 1925, not choose for it the last Sunday of the liturgical year (as Paul VI did later for his new mass), but rather the Last Sunday in October?" asks New Catholic over at Rorate Caeli. The answer comes from an article by Peter Kwasniewski, "Should the Feast of Christ the King Be Celebrated in October or November?" (Oct. 22, 2014), and it seems to be that the placement of the Feast of Christ the King in the liturgical calendar was, at least in part, inspired as a counter-point against the widespread Protestant commemoration on October 31st of the Protestant Reformation, which the Catholic world has traditionally viewed as being, in some sense, a catastrophe.

Tridentine Community News - Betty Klink, RIP; All Saints & All Souls Day Mass Schedules; Plenary Indulgence Opportunities for November; TLM schedule 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 (October 29, 2017):

October 29, 2017 – Christ the King

Betty Klink, RIP

A High Funeral Mass in the Extraordinary Form was offered at the neo-Gothic St. Alphonsus Church in Dearborn, Michigan [pictured] on Wednesday, October 25, 2017 for the repose of the soul of Betty Klink, who passed away the previous Friday. Betty and her late husband Terry were Latin Mass pioneers in metro Detroit, attending and supporting numerous Latin Mass communities.


Betty had struck up friendships with numerous big figures in the Church worldwide, via the old-fashioned technique of typewritten letters. Several years ago, after mentioning to Betty that a rare hymnal was needed to source an obscure hymn, this writer received a copy of that hymnal from none other than EWTN celebrity and Manhattan pastor Fr. George Rutler, one of Betty’s many pen pals. Réquiem ætérnam dona ei, Dómine, et lux perpétua lucéat ei. Requiéscat in pace. Amen.


All Saints & All Souls Day Mass Schedules

All Saints Day, Wednesday, November 1, is a Holy Day of Obligation in the United States (but not in Canada). Tridentine Masses for All Saints Day in our region are listed at the end of this page. Likewise the Mass schedule for All Souls Day, Thursday, November 2, is provided below.

St. Alphonsus Church in Windsor will once again host the Three Masses of All Souls Day, with two simultaneous Low Masses on the Side Altars being offered at 6:00 PM, and a Solemn High Mass with Deacon and Subdeacon at the High Altar at 7:00 PM. The St. Benedict choir will sing the Gregorian Requiem Mass, Mozart’s Lacrimósa, and Duruflé’s Lux Ætérna. Of particular note this year, St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Jackson, Michigan will also be offering the Three Masses of All Souls for the first time. It is good to see another church in the region take the opportunity to make a spiritual event of this great Feast for the Poor Souls in Purgatory.

Plenary Indulgence Opportunities for November

The month of November brings several opportunities to gain Plenary Indulgences for the Souls in Purgatory:

1. On All Souls Day, a Plenary Indulgence may be gained by praying an Our Father and Creed in a church or public oratory.

2. From November 1-8, inclusive, a Plenary Indulgence may be gained by visiting a cemetery and praying, even only mentally, for the dead.

Only one Plenary Indulgence may be gained per day, under the usual conditions of Confession within 20 days, reception of Holy Communion and prayer for the Holy Father’s intentions once per Plenary Indulgence sought, and freedom from attachment to sin.
Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 10/30 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Feria [Mass of the 21st Sunday After Pentecost])
• Tue. 10/31 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor (Feria [Mass of the 21st Sunday After Pentecost])
• Wed. 11/01 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto (All Saints)
• Wed. 11/01 12:00 Noon: Low Mass at St. Joseph (All Saints)
• Wed. 11/01 5:00 PM: High Mass at St. Mary Star of the Sea, Jackson (All Saints)
• Wed. 11/01 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Joseph (All Saints)
• Wed. 11/01 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Matthew, Flint (All Saints)
• Thu. 11/02 7:30 AM: Low Mass at Assumption Grotto (All Souls)
• Thu. 11/02M: 8:00 AM & 8:40 AM Low Masses, 7:00 PM Solemn High Mass at St. Joseph (All Souls)
• Thu. 11/02: 6:00 PM Two Low Masses at the Side Altars, 7:00 PM Solemn High Mass at the High Altar at St. Alphonsus, Windsor (All Souls)
• Thu. 11/02: 6:15 PM Two Low Masses at the Side Altars, 7:00 PM Solemn High Mass at the High Altar at St. Mary Star of the Sea, Jackson (All Souls)
• Thu. 11/02 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Matthew, Flint (All Souls)
• Fri. 11/03 7:00 PM: High Mass at Old St. Mary’s (Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) – Choir will sing Morales’ Missa Caça and Mozart’s Laudáte Dóminum. Devotions to the Sacred Heart prayed before Mass. Reception in the social hall after Mass.
• Fri. 11/03 7:00 PM: High Requiem Mass at Our Lady of the Scapular, Wyandotte, Michigan (Daily Mass for the Dead)
• Sat. 11/04 8:30 AM: Low Mass at Miles Christi (St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop & Confessor)

[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 October 29, 2017. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]