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Mary Immaculate
of Lourdes
The Tridentine Latin Mass
and a 2000 year tradition alive
and well in Boston
Mary Immaculate of Lourdes, Newton,
MA
Father Charles J. Higgins,
Pastor
270 Elliot Street,
Newton, MA 02464
The
Catholic Latin Mass of 2000 years is alive and well in Boston — and
flourishing!
(see the photo gallery!)
Just 15 minutes
from down town Boston and just a couple of miles from route 95 (route
128) lies a spiritual treasure for Catholics of greater Boston —
Mary Immaculate of Lourdes where the Mass is celebrated in the ancient
language of the Catholic Church, Latin, according to the Roman Missal
of 1962 — in other words, as the Mass had been celebrated for the better
part of 2000 years before the devastating liturgical changes following
the Second Vatican Council.
After Vatican
II, the Church had, “flung open the doors”, allowing the world to rush
in — as the Faithful rushed out. The “ever ancient, ever new” had completely
discarded the former and left the latter as the only iteration of an
identity bereft of its history. Since the notion of identity implies
history (my own identity necessarily incorporates a history of who and
what I have been in any attempt to understand who I presently
am, and this is what I understand as a sense of my own
“identity”), the vast and sweeping changes in the liturgy and life of
the Church following the Second Vatican Council left Catholics
reeling and uncertain about the one remaining and most vital certainty
they once possessed: the Church ... as “ever ancient and ever new" —
and which had become, with breathtaking celerity, “ever new and ever
newer.”
Holy
Ground
The Church was
always the one copula to every generation past, regardless of any other
changes around them. It was the rite, the ritual, the language that
had baptized their living and buried their dead for 2000 years. It was
a single, unbroken continuity with a past by which they understood the
present; indeed, for many, by which they deeply understood themselves.
More than any given building, it was a soil, a single and sacred soil
that subtended every Church in every city of every nation, binding each
through an absolutely common and holy ground.
And suddenly ...
it was swept from under their feet. Practices, devotions, and rituals,
even beliefs, that in many ways had defined the Church as a singular
and unique institution apart from all others, became ... irrelevant,
“incorrect” or simply “wrong”. In so many ways, “The Faith of Our Fathers”
was no longer our own. We practiced, prayed, lived, worshipped, and
in some significant ways, believed, what was vastly different from our
forbears. Many had lost a “sense of identity” largely through the absence
of something cogent to “identify with”. Indeed, what had historically
been cherished as uniquely Catholic had been the very things first jettisoned
by the flurry of changes following Vatican II. We need not catalog them,
although we could (language, liturgy, devotions, theology, architecture,
statuary, art, catechesis, etc.)
Summorum Pontificum (Before Francis abolished it in August of 2021)
Then
came Summorum Pontificum. Finally, a vinculum to all that had
been lost, discarded, jettisoned, and disdained or ridiculed by the
more “progressive” and “enlightened” Catholics who cherished a pseudo-clerical
power invested in them through endless “Ministries” of this and that,
and quarrelsome “Parish Councils”. The progressive laity hijacked the
Sanctuary even as the priests ventured farther and farther out into
the pews. Summorum Pontificum did not put the brakes on this
... but it offered a more than viable alternative to much of the liturgical
experimentation, innovation and nonsense that has plagued and divided
the Church for over 50 years. It brought back to us, incorrupt, “The
Faith of Our Fathers” — as our fathers had known and practiced it. The
patrimony that had been lost had been reacquired. The Catholic longing
for the beauty and solemnity of the Tridentine Mass had the stigma removed
of being a Latin-Rite Leper — a pariah among his own people — even to
the episcopacy which grudgingly acceded to what it could no longer forbid.
Pope Benedict XVI, well aware of the controversy and reluctance that
his encyclical would engender, wisely circumvented the College of Cardinals
by issuing it as a Motu Proprio (of his own personal accord).
A Catholic could pray — even worship — in Latin with impunity. What
is more, he could worship and pray free of distraction by so many personalities
competing for his attention during the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
He could focus on Christ; be totally present to the Sacrifice being
enacted before him. Free of drums, cymbals, trap sets, and banging pianos
by a troupe of performers eager to solicit his applause at the end of
Mass, he could enter the Church with one sole purpose: to worship, rather
than to be entertained.
This is what you
will find at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in Newton, Massachusetts:
worship of God, rather than adulation of man. This is heady stuff;
the stuff of dreams. The dreams of so many Catholics for so long. Solemnity,
dignity, ecclesiastical beauty, the organ ... Gregorian chant! The
Angelus!
In
English, as Well
Mary Immaculate
of Lourdes also celebrates the Mass in the vernacular English found
at most parishes, but with this significant difference: whether in the
vernacular or in Latin, the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is always
celebrated with great reverence, solemnity, and dignity. In this sense,
it is the Mass in the vernacular as the Second Vatican Council had envisioned
and intended ... which is to say, not what has been widely implemented
in America and elsewhere. Here we find that the Mass can be experienced
as profoundly sacred even in the vernacular. Christ —
not the anecdotal priest as entertainer, not the pianist, the drummer,
the lector, or the “Music Ministers” — is the center of the Mass, the
Mass understood and enacted as a Sacrifice — the very Sacrifice on Calvary
before which we stand, in which we ourselves participate, not as spectators
before some distant and remote drama, but as participants actually standing
at the foot of the Cross. Drums, cymbals, trap sets, pianos, divas ...
where were they on Calvary? And were they there, could they really do
aught but stand and tremble?
Now that you know
the waking reality, what drive could be so long, what journey so arduous,
that you would conscionably excuse yourself and demur from this tremendous,
this inestimable gift? “The Faith of Our Fathers” ... yes. It
is here. Bring, then, the children, that they may know the beauty of
the worship due the true and living God — and to bequeath it to their
own children from generation to generation.
Faith of Our Fathers!
Ita est!
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
DIRECTIONS and INFORMATION:
Totally Faithful to the Sacred
Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse
3.8)
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