Month: October 2021

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News Briefs

‘Sancta Nox’ album of Christmas Matins debuts at #1 on Billboard Traditional Classical Albums chart

October 8, 2021 Catholic News Agency 2
Seminarians of the FSSP’s International Seminary of St. Peter. / Photo courtesy of Sophia Institute Press.

Denver Newsroom, Oct 8, 2021 / 17:01 pm (CNA).

On Sept. 28, a community of seminarians from the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter’s European seminary released an album of Christmas Matins, “Sancta Nox: Christmas Matins from Bavaria”. This week, the 17-song collection topped the Billboard’s Traditional Classical Albums chart.  

“We are very surprised and grateful that people have already found this recording, and humbled that they have decided to add this music to the Christmas experience and traditions,” said Manuel Vaz Guedes, one of the singers, who is from Lisbon.  

Recorded in surround sound at St. Magnus Abbey, Bad Schussenried in Germany, the album features mostly Gregorian chant, sung by seminarians of Saint Peter Wigratzbad Seminary. The abbey was built in the 12th century, with acoustics “perfect” for recording Gregorian chant, said Vaz Guedes. 

The seminarians go to the abbey from time-to-time to celebrate special feast days, said Vaz Guedes. 

“It was a very inspirational setting for recording this music,” he said.

The album includes a multi-lingual arrangement of “Stille Nacht”, along with several songs arranged by the seminarians themselves. 

“We set about bringing our very best to recording music that was representative of the beauty found in the truth,” said Vaz Guedes, who discovered he could sing through Gregorian chant. “I think music is one of the most perfect ways of exteriorizing the faith and one of the most profound ways to pray to God.” 

Matins are part of the Divine Office, which priests and monks pray every single day. In the album, Vaz Guedes said, listeners will find the “life and prayer of a seminarian” during Christmas.

“Christmas Matins have a great importance because they precede, immediately, the Christmas night Mass and one of the most solemn and beautiful moments of the liturgical year,” Vaz Guedes said.  “We wanted to share how we pray on Christmas night.”

The seminarians recorded the album under the direction of Christopher Alder, a Grammy Award-winning classical music producer and Christian Weigl, a Grammy Award-winning engineer. 

“The uniqueness of this recording resides in the fact that we are very young singers singing very ancient and venerable music,” said Vaz Guedes. “The average age of our group is 25 and the average age of the music we are singing is probably 800. That’s a very gratifying collaboration to be part of.”

The music, Vaz Guedes said, can be enjoyed by a wide audience, including listeners who prefer traditional sacred music, as well as those who want to experience peace. 

“We must be attentive to the words we are saying and to the beauty of the melody we are singing,” he said. “ We can meditate on the words because they are the formal part of the prayer—they are the prayer we address to God—But we have the opportunity to do it [while]  enjoying the beauty of the melody or the harmony, because the beauty of music is a participation of the perfect beauty that is God.” 

The FSSP’s North American seminary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, had in 2017 released an album featuring the chants of the Requiem Mass.


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News Briefs

Churchgoing Catholics disapprove of limits on Traditional Latin Mass, but Pope Francis still popular

October 8, 2021 Catholic News Agency 2
The prostration of the ordinandi during the Litany of the Saints at Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, the FSSP’s parish in Rome, June 22, 2013. / CNA

Denver Newsroom, Oct 8, 2021 / 16:50 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis’ restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass appear to be unpopular among regularly practicing Catholics, but most American Catholics have not even heard of the changes, a survey reports.

“Catholics who attend Mass weekly are both more likely to be aware of the new restrictions and more inclined to oppose them than Catholics who attend less frequently,” the Pew Research Center, which conducted the survey, said Oct. 7

About 58% of Catholics who attended Mass weekly had heard about the restrictions. Regular Mass attendees were the most sceptical of the Pope’s move. Of these, 29% disapproved of the new restrictions, 11% approved, while 17% had no opinion. However, 42% had not heard of the changes.

On July 16, in Traditionis custodes, Pope Francis issued rules giving a bishop “exclusive competence” to authorize the Traditional Latin Mass in his diocese. Bishops with groups celebrating this form of the liturgy in their dioceses are to ensure that the groups do not deny the validity of the Second Vatican Council. The council, held in the 1960s, preceded major changes in the Roman Catholic liturgy. These changes were codified in 1970 with St. Paul VI’s Roman Missal, the missal used in most Catholic parishes in vernacular languages.

The restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass are a break from the practice established in a 2007 apostolic letter from Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificum, which had acknowledged the rights of all priests to offer the Mass according to the Roman Missal of 1962, promulgated by St. John XXIII.

Overall, some two-thirds of Catholics told Pew that they had heard “nothing at all” about the changes from Pope Francis, 28% had heard “only a little,” while 7% had heard “a lot.” Overall, 9% approved, 12% disapproved, and 14% declined to answer.

Catholics who attend Mass monthly or yearly slightly favored the new restrictions rather than opposed them. Respondents’ opinions appeared not to differ significantly by age. Besides religious practice, Catholics’ favorability towards Traditional Latin Mass restrictions broke along partisan lines.

Among Catholics who are Republicans or lean Republican, only 4% approved the pope’s move, while 20% disapproved. Another 15% had no opinion, while 61% had not heard of the change. By contrast, 13% of Catholics who are Democrats or lean Democrat supported the move, 6% opposed it, 13% had no opinion and some 68% had not heard of it.

Pope Francis said he had issued the restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass “in defense of the unity of the Body of Christ,” saying, “I am constrained to revoke the faculty granted by my predecessors.” He said permission to celebrate this form of the liturgy had led to “distorted use” that was contrary to the intentions that had allowed it.

In response to the papal action, some bishops have said that priests may continue to offer the Traditional Latin Mass in their dioceses, while others have banned it. Still others have said they need more time to consider their response.

Laity and clergy who support the traditional Latin Mass had their own reactions.

Joseph Shaw, the chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, told CNA that many priests and lay Catholics have worked to combine an interest in the Traditional Latin Mass with “sincere loyalty and affection for the hierarchy and the Holy Father.” He said they have been “let down by this document.”

Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, told the National Catholic Register that the text was “marked by a harshness” towards those who attend extraordinary form Masses.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat was also critical, contrasting the action with Francis’ stress on accompanying people: “Accompaniment for some, slow strangulation of their rites for others.”

It is unclear how many Traditional Latin Mass parishes will be affected by the pope’s new limits and how the limits will affect diocesan clergy and laity who seek to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass going forward. Catholic parishes that celebrate this Mass are a small minority. As of Oct. 8, the Latin Mass Directory website lists 662 venues in the U.S. By comparison, there are over 16,700 parishes in the U.S., according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

Pew’s survey also asked respondents whether they had a favorable or unfavorable view of Pope Francis.

American Catholics’ favorability of the pope hovered at about 83%, with Catholics who attend Mass monthly or yearly slightly more favorable towards Pope Francis. Democratic or Democrat-leaning Catholics gave the pope 91% approval, compared to 71% of Republicans or Republican sympathizers. Overall, only 14% of Catholics had an unfavorable view of the pope.

However, 49% of Republican or Republican-leaning Catholics described the pope as too liberal. Only 30% of all Catholics, and 16% of Democratic or Democrat-leaning Catholics said the same.

Strong majorities of Catholic respondents tended to agree that Pope Francis should be described as compassionate, humble, and open-minded, and tended to reject describing him as out of touch or naïve. However, only 52% said he is in good physical health, and Republican or Republican-leaning respondents tended to be less positive in their descriptions of the pope.

American Catholics tend to be more favorable towards Pope Francis than Americans overall. Only 60% of all U.S. respondents had a favorable view of the pontiff, with 28% voicing an unfavorable view.

The Pew Research Center’s survey of 6,485 U.S. adults, 1,374 of whom are Catholic, was conducted Sept. 20-26 as part of Pew’s American Trends Panel. Pew said the survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by sex, race, ethnicity, party affiliation, education, religious affiliation and other categories.

The survey claims a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points for all Americans, plus or minus 4.3 percentage points for all Catholics, and plus or minus 8.4 percentage points for Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly.


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No Picture
News Briefs

Parishioners ‘in deep grief’ over removal of Dominicans from historic New Haven church

October 8, 2021 Catholic News Agency 1
A portrait of Bl. Michael McGivney, unveiled Oct. 31 during the priest’s beatification Mass. / Christine Rousselle/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 8, 2021 / 15:40 pm (CNA).

The forced departure of the Dominican Order from historic St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, Connecticut after 135 years has deeply upset and puzzled some parishioners, who question why the move is necessary as part of a restructuring of the Archdiocese of Hartford.

“To be honest, we are in deep grief right now,” parishioner Erika Ahern told CNA in an email. “Both as a family and as a parish community, we see the removal of the Dominicans as a great spiritual tragedy.” 

Established in 1886, St. Mary’s is the second-oldest Catholic parish in Connecticut and the home church of the Knights of Columbus, whose founder, Bl. Michael J. McGivney, once the parish’s assistant pastor, is entombed there.

In response to dwindling parish rolls, the archdiocese plans to merge multiple New Haven parishes into a single parish centered at St. Mary’s, which priests of the archdiocese will administer.

In a statement, the archdiocese told the New Haven Register that St. Mary is “uniquely suited as the center of a municipal model of pastoral care with several priests living together and serving the ten city churches.”

The number of Catholics in New Haven has declined from 70,000 in the 1930s to 10,000 today, the newspaper reported.

Once parishioners realized that the removal of the Dominicans was “a likely possible outcome of the archdiocese’s pastoral planning,” Ahern said, she and other lay faithful started a prayer group in late June to pray that the friars could be left undisturbed at St. Mary’s.

“We came together to fast and pray a novena to Our Lady of the Rosary,” Ahern said. “When that finished, we prayed a 54-day novena for the intentions of both the provincial and the archbishop.” 

On Oct. 5, Fr. John Paul Walker, O.P., the pastor of St. Mary’s, announced that the Dominicans would indeed be leaving the archdiocese as part of a larger restructuring plan by the archdiocese. 

“After discussions over the summer, the archdiocese has recently informed our Dominican Province that when this second phase is implemented, the pastoral care of this municipal parish will be entrusted entirely to the care of priests of the Archdiocese of Hartford — and thus a continuing presence of the Dominican friars in the pastoral ministry of St. Mary Parish or in residence at St. Mary Priory will no longer be possible,” said Walker in a letter to his parish. 

“It is thus with great sadness I share with you that in January 2022, the pastoral care of St. Mary Parish will be turned over to the priest(s) named by the archbishop, and the Dominican friars will depart from St. Mary Priory.” 

For Ahern, and many others at the parish, the decision to remove the Dominican friars from the archdiocese amid a shortage of priests is a confusing one. 

“It’s difficult to understand this decision,” she said. “We have heard for so many years that there is a shortage of priests and a crisis of vocations in the archdiocese. It just seems strange to be severing ties with a thriving source of new vocations as is happening now with the Province of St Joseph.”

The Province of St. Joseph is one of the four provinces of the Dominican Order in the United States, and its territory stretches from New England to Virginia, and westward to Ohio. In August, the province welcomed 14 new novices into the community. 

Ahern told CNA that she and other parishioners do not view the situation as a “zero sum game” that necessitates the departure of the Dominicans. 

“It should be that the archdiocese can work together with the province so that the spiritual fruits of St. Mary’s can continue to thrive under the direction of the Dominicans,” she added.

The presence of the Dominican friars, said Ahern, “has greatly blessed our family and the families of the parish.” She said that her parish has “been gifted friars of the highest virtue and charity,” who have “brought a level of reverence to the liturgy that many of us never experienced before.” 

“It’s hard to articulate just the depth of their influence on our lives,” said Ahern. “We are especially grateful for the good example they have given us during this difficult time of humility, prayer, and reverence for the hierarchy of the Church.”

The Dominicans may, in the future, have some sort of presence within the Archdiocese of Hartford, but what that is remains to be seen. According to Walker, the archdiocese “asked the Dominican Province to consider three new ministries in the Archdiocese as an alternative to St. Mary’s.”

“As each of these would entail a radically new configuration of the Dominican life and mission in the Archdiocese, the Dominican Province has decided to evaluate these new offers at our next provincial chapter, which will take place in June of 2022,” he said.  

But for now, while they wait to see what happens next, Ahern and other parishioners of St. Mary’s are relying on the wisdom of another Dominican: St. Catherine of Siena. 

“She has been an example to us during this time of confusion and dismay,” said Ahern. “We hope that both the provincial and the archbishop feel the power of our prayers for them both. We look forward to seeing what fruit God will bring out of what feels like a tragedy at this point.” 

The Archdiocese of Hartford did not respond to CNA’s request for comment in time for publication.


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