I see from reports in the blogosphere that the training session for the 1962 missal was a great success. I would have liked to have been there to see what was going on but as I already know how to celebrate the 1962 missal and have been doing so since 1989 I couldn`t think of a reason for going. Most of the Catholics in this country live in the north of the country yet there doesn`t seem to be the interest in having such a session up here. I suppose we were already blessed a couple of years ago when bishop Roche of Leeds asked for younger priests who were interested in celebrating the 1962 missal to come forward and instruction was arranged for them in the diocese. That was quite a prophetic move as it turns out.
Not a lot has been heard from the hierarchy of this country about how the new legal situation for the 1962 missal will affect us. I can somehow imagine we will be reminded that only qualified priests will be suitable to celebrate but will there then be diocesan training sessions for those priests who wish to become `idoneus`? Maybe we can look forward to Latin tuition for priests whose seminary training did not match the requirements of the 1983 code of canon law that they be well versed in Latin ( canon 249). It was never the case when I was at seminary that this canon was obeyed. There was an optional Latin course but with so many other compulsory courses this was never going to fulfil the requirement. It was different in Rome where the charismatic Fr Reggie Foster taught an optional Latin course for English speakers which was always popular but again so far as I am aware no-one had to do it as part of the path to ordination.
Apart from that one hopes that seminaries will now also see to it that instruction in the 1962 missal is part of priestly formation otherwise priests will be being ordained without being able to celebrate the Roman Rite in both its ordinary and extraordinary forms.
In the meantime I have listened to the requests of my `stable group` (sorry Fr Zuhlsdorf, I know you don`t like that translation of the rather rare word continenter but it is useful shorthand!) which comes for my up to now `private` 1962 Mass on a Saturday morning and will mark the new legal situation with a low Mass at St Mary`s on the evening of September 14th at 7pm. I don`t expect this will be the only request they will make!
4 comments:
I would have gone along to Merton, but it was advertised for those priests who had been ordained over the last ten years. I felt quite excluded...and ancient!
Now, unless they have been kept out of photographs for their own 'protection', there didn't seem to be many younger priests in evidence.
As you say,Father, the calculated absence of the study of Latin in many seminaries doesn't help those priests of a 'certain age'. Perhaps we should follow the litigious trend and sue the negligent seminaries for denying us our rights...and rites!
If you are the priest I think you are be assured that I put forward your name to the LMS for an invitation to Oxford. Looking so young I thought you would pass for recently ordained!
Thanks Richard. I hope I am the priest you think I am! People are sometimes surprised when they find out my age but I don`t think I`d pass for a fresh-faced 25.
Richard, erm... I don't think I got the invitation (must open some of this mail mountain.
Considering I have been ordained for over 20 years, perhaps I am not the priest you think I am!
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