Our vision: “Imagine for a moment a vibrant and confident Catholic church, the pews filled every Sunday with parishioners of all ages, eager to celebrate a distinctive liturgy that will impart a sense of reverence and awe and the mystery of Christ's redeeming sacrifice.
It is our hope that eventually Catholics in our country would have the opportunity to attend Sunday Mass in the Tridentine Rite.”
The Choir at Christmas Midnight Mass, December 24, 2008
Featuring the Choir at Midnight Mass in the Extraordinary Form (aka Traditional Latin Mass) at St. Jerome Emiliani Church on December 24, 2008, before an overflow congregation. This is the first midnight Mass in the Extraordinary Form in the history of the Diocese of Paranaque. Celebrant is Fr. Grato Germanetto, CRS, and Italian Somascan priest and pastor of St. Jerome Emiliani and Santa Susan Parish.
The Traditional Latin Mass at the Shrine of St. Therese will have the following guest priests for its regular 9:30am Sunday High Mass:
September 27, 2009 – Rev. Fr. John Anthony, Superior of the Franciscan Friars Immaculate.
October 4, 2009 – Rev. Fr. Joseph Skelton.
We are seeking donors to cover for the stipends of the two guest priests. Please contact us via email or cellphone (09195064046). Thank you for your kind support.
There will be Traditional Latin Mass at the following parishes:
September 29, 2009 – 6:30pm by Rev. Fr. John Anthony at St. James the Great Parish in Ayala Alabang Village, Alabang, Muntinlupa.
October 3, 2009 – 8:30am by Rev. Fr. Joseph Skelton at Christ the King Parish in Greenmeadows.
We have reformatted some of the Training DVD’s which the FSSP provides free to priests and seminarians. Although reformatted, they are still large files. Those interested should have high speed internet connection DSL or cable. Contact us if interested.
The first thing people need to understand about the Traditional Latin Mass (or Tridentine) is that its emphasis is silent prayer and quiet reflection. This means that from the moment you walk into the church, you change all your actions from social to prayerful.
Movements should be reverent and slow. No talking please. Treat the Mass as if you were at the foot of Calvary, silently watching Jesus offer himself up to the Father as sacrifice for your sins. Because that is what the Mass is. Treat the Tabernacle as if you were being presented face-to-face with the Triune God in Heaven for the first time, because that is who is inside the Tabernacle. Christ said to Saint Gertrude: “One idle word in church is worth a hundred years in Purgatory.”
1.Dress as if you just died and were about to meet God face-to-face for the first time.
2.Men should never go to Mass in shorts or sleeveless shirts.
3.Women should dress modestly and feminine, and not in sleeveless, tank shirts, or minis.
4.Women should use veils as is traditional but not mandatory. To God, what is sacred must be veiled out of respect. A woman is a tabernacle of God’s creation. Ask one of the volunteers where you can purchase one if you wish.
5. The Gregorian chant is the traditional music for Latin texts in the worship of the Roman Catholic Church. The choir is well trained and is taught to sing to God and not to the people. The music should sound like heavenly background to prayer, not something that beats up the ears and distracts prayer.
6.Follow along with the mass in the Missal or a Latin-English booklet provided. The Propers of the Mass in Latin-English are in the insert also provided. In the Traditional Latin Mass, the greater part of the mass is said in Latin. The Kyrie Eleison is Greek and the Hebrew words are found in the words Alleluia, Amen and Hosanna.
7. The faithful can and should sing the liturgical responses found in the Latin-English Mass booklet provided. These are: Amen; Et cum spiritu tuo; Gloria tibi, Domine; Habemus ad Dominum; Dignum et justum est; Sed libera nos a malo; Deo gratias.
8.The faithful should learn to sing the Ordinary of the Mass: Kyrie, eleison; Gloria in excelsis Deo; Credo; Sanctus-Benedictus; Agnus Dei., particularly according to the simpler Gregorian melodies.
9. In most parts of the Traditional Latin Mass, the priest, who acts in persona Christi, prays to God facing the altar (facing the East towards Jerusalem) and only when he turns and faces the people does he speak to the people. This is the high priest (Christ) praying to the Father for the people. It is Christ offering His sacrifice for us, and we are there praying and thanking God.
10. Remember that people are there to pray, so do not fidget with your rosary or make sounds or movements that would distract others from prayer. Just use common Church etiquette, which means keeping silent.
11.When going to communion stay in line and go to the next space at the altar rail and kneel down and wait for the priest to come to you. If there is a communion cloth over the altar rail, put your hands under it. The priest will say, “Corpus Dómini nostri Jesu Christi custódiat ánimam tuam in vitam ætérnam. Amen” [“May the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve your soul unto everlasting life. Amen”]. There is no need to answer with “Amen.” Receive communion on the tongue, bow your head a moment and get up and go back to your pew. Remain kneeling until the priest starts the final prayers of the Mass.
12.After Mass, leave the church without talking because some people may remain inside praying and you would not want to interrupt God. After some distance from the front door, it is time to socialize and share your faith with others. If coffee or snack is available in the social hall, join the other parishioners and inquire how you could volunteer or donate. In the past everything was done at the church. Faith was shared and taught at the church. Socialization builds a parish but prayer builds faith.
The Traditional Latin Mass will be celebrated every Sunday, 9:30 AM, temporarily in the chapel of the National Shrine of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, located in Villamor Air Base in Pasay City. The chapel is in the midst of the columbarium ["catacombs"] located under the main Church. Pasay City is the territory of the Archdiocse of Manila, but the air base is under the Military Ordinariate of the Philippines.
During today’s meeting, Fr. Grato announced that he was discontinuing the TLM at St. Jerome effective immediately. He did not mention anything about the controversy regarding communion in the hand, although I believe this is a contributing factor in his decision. Fr. Grato said he felt that TLM St. Jerome was like a “church within a church.” He expressed unhappiness with the present situation. He further said that he will be writing to the bishop to explain his action. He advised us to seek out other parishes in the diocese that may be willing to accommodate a regular celebration of the EF Mass.
Unless Bishop Mercado persuades Fr. Grato otherwise, this marks the end of my involvement with St. Jerome. This also highlights the importance of establishing a personal parish staffed by priests who will exclusively serve the needs of the TLM faithful, where Catholics attached to the TLM will truly feel at home and not be treated as second-class citizens who have to make way for Novus Ordo Masses. Having committed time and resources to TLM St. Jerome and seeing how quickly it evaporated, I am convinced that a TLM St. Jerome-type arrangement in other parishes in the diocese, although possible, is a short-term fix that will not fully address the needs of the TLM faithful and may in fact suffer the same fate of TLM St. Jerome. This type of arrangement surely cannot be our goal.
I am presently considering several options, as others are, and in due course will take the appropriate action. In the meantime I ask for everyone’s prayers. Let us pray that the EF Mass will one day find a permanent home in the diocese of Paranaque.
Sts. Peter and Paul, pray for us!
RICHARD M. FRIEND Chairman, Organizing Committee Traditional Latin Mass St. Jerome Emiliani
I urge all priests and bishops who read this blog with any slight quaver of resonance or benevolence, to consider this with care:
If you sense that something quite serious and important is going on right now, for the love of God rethink your approach to how you foster Holy Church’s proper public worship.
Do all in your power and through your influence to foster a worship of God which conforms not to worldly goals – as praiseworthy as they may be in a world still dominated by its dire prince – but rather to the real point of religion: an encounter with mystery.
Our worship must become more and more focused on the one who is Other. Seek what is truly above in your rites and raise people to encounter mystery.
You will be challenged and reviled, blocked and attacked as you do. You will be worn down and afraid under the weight of resistance.
But I think that to save the world we must save the liturgy.
They can’t compete with the fullness of Catholic liturgy and sound preaching.
Reforming the liturgy along the lines Pope Benedict has proposed may be the most loving and effective option we have in these ever hotter times.
People will have to keep working very much in the sphere of the secular. Of course! Our inward Catholic Christian identity must find outward expression and bring concrete fruits.
But I think the real work now – where we will make some effective headway – must be done at the level of our public worship.
In the present circumstances, we are not going to argue most people out of danger or error. But together we can draw them in and along and back through worship.
So long as we remain doctrinally faithful and active in works of mercy both spiritual and especially temporal, if we get our public worship together we will have a strong bastion against error.
Holy Catholic worship will be an attractive force for conversion.
We need to foster worship which stuns, which leaves the newcomer, long-time practicing Catholic, above all the fallen-away simply thunder stuck. Worship must at some point leave people speechless in awe. We need language and music and gesture which in its beauty floods the mind with light even while it swells the heart to bursting.
The more people encounter mystery through liturgy, the more hollow will clang the false or incomplete messages of those who have strayed from the good path, either to the left or to the right.
Our goal must be that which is good and beautiful because it is true, that which reflects what is of God, not man’s image merely. Give us mystery, not fabrications smacking of the world, fallen and transitory.
Fathers, and you Reverend Bishops, if anything of alarm has sounded in your hearts and minds of late, rethink your approach to our worship. Examine your approach with an eye on the signs of the times. Take a new approach.
The approach we have had least last few decades isn’t getting it done. Really … it isn’t.
Going neither left nor right along the road toward the Lord, even as He comes to us, take the flock now deeper, now higher on that path, but always to encounter the mystery which distinguishes truly Catholic liturgy… and therefore true Catholics.
Lines are being drawn, sides taken, choices made.
More than ever we need what Christ, the true Actor of our liturgy, desires to offer us through Holy Church’s worship.
