Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The Extraordinary Form at Longbenton


After much consideration, I have decided that the best way to accomodate the request for a Sunday Mass in the EF is to have a Mass on Sunday evenings at SS Peter and Paul, Longbenton. Initially this will be once a month on the first Sunday of the month at 6pm. The church is better suited to the liturgy than St Mary`s and a Sunday evening mass at St Mary`s will clash with the parish youth group who meet in the church hall which was created out of the original sanctuary. When we had the High Mass on September 23rd the noise was very distracting and they were doing their best to keep quiet!


So we will have the first Mass this Sunday evening and I`m glad to say it will be a Missa Cantata. I hope this will generally be the case but it is difficult without, for the moment, singers from the parish. However the Schola Gregoriana are able to come this Sunday and we are glad they can.

Recruiting servers ought to be easier. So far I have one server from the parish but I hope others will follow with a little encouragement.

Nothing has been done with the strange statue of Christ coming off the cross as yet but I hope we will be able to address that in the New Year as the parish council at SS Peter and Paul are in favour of a change.

2 comments:

Fr Justin said...

It looks a very fine sanctuary, Father, if you were to manage to put the altar back whence it came. I suppose that isn't very possible in the near future, though.

Fr Michael Brown said...

It is a much more practical sanctuary than that at St Mary`s Forest Hall. I can see us having more EF Masses at LB. I must write a report on the Mass. It wasn`t at all packed but we`ll be trying again on January 6th.