Good on you!

Thanks much for the contents of your blog. I was particularly touched by your help to our dear Island, MOntserrat. Carry on the good work and know that I continue to be proud of you and my prayers continue to follow you.

Jamaica is a big challenge to me not bieng a Catholic country. But you know I love challenges. Just finished a class of Adult Religious Education and I spoke about the Pauline Year to the students. Will appreciate anything on this, e.g. ideas regarding celoebrating it.

Gratefully,
Lovey, icm

Yes, this is Lovey reacting to your website from Jamaica, W.I. Come September 15, I will be 3 years here after finsihing 9 years in Dominica.

Congratulations for the wonderful work you continue to do for the Kindom! I continue to be proud of you and your ministry.\\

Guess what? I am still strongly awaiting the day you will be our POPE.
Carry on the good work and my prayers are with you.
Grateful for your insightful words and the inspiration to move on in spite of the difficulties and social disorders here.

Lovey, icm

WOW, you have moved now to the South Shore and closed the Brighton offices. Apparently you are in the closing mode as yet 2 more churches have met their demise this past weekend. With a movement of a pen and no thought behind it, these wonderful ethnic structures are padlocked and shackled.

In one case, Holy Trinity, here for more than a century and a half, is suddenly left to rot. The history and all the orations repeated over the years is now silenced. And for what? A lame excuse of shortages and logistics. And to please the Latin Mass community, you stick us in the basement of the cathedral? Yes, Christ was born in a stable and Fr. John Connoly, as if to paint a rosy picture, prays that we can grow and develop in new surroundings and become whole again. What were you thinking? Did you not see the tears and how distraught you have left the faithful? Did you not see media coverage of those fighting back tears as we are slapped in the face by one who is supposed to be the Good Shepherd of his flock? I do not see him here.

I have the utmost respect for your office and the position you hold. My heart breaks and is heavy with such a loss. What gets me, there is no sound reasoning here. You never once spoke to this parish which is literally walking distance to your residence. I would have been more than happy to pick you up and bring you there. Instead, your henchman had the job a couple of years back to announce this closing. Your canonical lawyer who also mentioned that he had to close the parish of his grandparents!!! How does that look on his resume’?

Shocked and appalled and so disappointed since the departure of Cardinal Law and your arrival here. Because of the horrendous sins of a few, the faithful must suffer.

God help us,

Joe Rizzo

Muy recordado siempre en nuestras oraciones,
en especial en dia de hoy.

Maria & Emilio Biosca

FSSP Eucharistic Congress in Quebec
The FSSP at the International Eucharistic Congress in Québec:

Between June 15th and 22nd 2008 in Québec, FSSP priests will propose Eucharistic devotions and lectures, as well as solemn liturgies. In particular:
• Sunday 15th June: recollection for Confraternity members and other persons interested
• Saturday 21st June, 10am, Pontifical High Mass by Bishop André-Mutien Léonard of Namur (Belgium), assisted by FSSP Superior General Fr John Berg.

God bless you.

It’s not what you expect to see when you step into a Catholic church these days.

Demurely dressed women in lace mantillas. A priest with his back to the congregation [Well… not really.. but okay.]: In nomini Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.

Bells ringing. Gregorian chant floating down from the choir loft. [Sounds good to me.]

But here it all is at Holy Trinity German Church, on Shawmut Avenue in the South End, at the start of a sweltering Sunday.

About 100 people from Bourne and West Roxbury and all over come for the 9 a.m. Latin Mass. They are men and women of all ages, Catholics convinced that their church made a big mistake when it did away with the Latin Mass. [WDTPRSers do not favor the term "the Latin Mass", but let’s move along.]

“I don’t get anything out of the [English] Mass,” says Kathleen Stone, 59, of Hull. “There is a lack of reverence. This is my time alone with God.” [I should hope she could at least get the Sacred Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ out of "English Mass". Still, the way some Masses are celebrated, we can forgive the momentary lack of perspective. Also, the issue isn’t language. We don’t like "the English Mass" any more than "the Latin Mass" as a useful term.]

This grand church is the perfect setting for a Latin Mass. [As so many of them were. Immigrants scrimped and saved, sacrificed deeply to build these beautiful churches, later treated with so little respect for the people who built them.]

Incongruous in one of the few unprettified parts of the South End, its puddingstone and granite exterior is impressive enough.

But walking through Holy Trinity’s doors will take your breath away. ["But Father! But Father!", someone might be wondering, "Don’t you prefer one of these nice new modern churches? You know… the one’s that look like a bowling alley or a parking ramp?"]

Light filters through huge, deeply hued, stained, etched, and painted glass windows. Enormous, hand-carved statues of the Twelve Apostles look down from the walls. Immense pillars hold up impossibly high, sky-blue gothic arches.

Parishioners say it was mostly working people who scraped together the money to turn the church, which opened in 1877 to serve thousands of German immigrants, into a place resembling the ornate cathedrals they left behind, by cramming it with paintings and statues.

But Stone and the others have just three Sundays left at Holy Trinity.

The Archdiocese of Boston is closing the church June 30, partly because its congregation is too small to sustain it, officials say.

Parishioners at Holy Trinity, like those in many of the churches that have been closed, are mighty angry. They are probably going to appeal the archdiocese’s decision. But the church closing isn’t the end of the Latin Mass in these parts. In fact, the Latin Mass is having a resurgence.

The parish of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in Newton offers Latin Masses now, and that is where some of Holy Trinity’s worshipers have already gone, reluctantly.

Last year, Pope Benedict XV loosened the rules, allowing any church with enough support to offer Masses in Latin. [Actually, the provisions of Summorum Pontificum go far beyond that.] Four other local churches now have them, too, so the Latin Mass will survive this closing.

Less certain is the future of that lovely church itself, designed and built to outlast all of the transformations within it.

The Archdiocese has closed about 60 parishes since it began its consolidation four years ago. A few churches have been sold to other denominations. Some have been turned into housing, including condominiums. In the happiest cases, their windows have been pulled out and sent to other parishes, their statues and pulpits and stations of the cross scattered across the country. It’s too soon to know what will happen here.

Susan Long saw her old church, the parish of Saints Peter and Paul on Broadway in South Boston, turned into condos, and she can’t bear the thought of the same thing happening at Holy Trinity, where she says the Latin Mass gave her a spiritual reawakening.

“I was baptized there,” she says. “Now there are people sitting at a holy place smoking cigarettes.” [Does this not say it all?]

We have paid a lot of attention to the communities like this one, broken apart by church closings, and rightly so.

But sitting in Holy Trinity for an hour, imagining this beautiful place sectioned off for granite countertops and walk-in closets, you realize there are other casualties in this whole painful process.

Like so many other churches representing the highest aspirations of long-gone Catholics, this grand, transcendent place may ultimately not transcend at all.

Hope to hear from you soon.

God Bless,

Kindest Regards,

Desiree