This photo was taken this past Monday, on George Washington's Birthday. I went to Mass at St. Anne's in San Diego, which was given over to the Fraternity of St. Peter as personal parish. I thought Fr. Sean would like to see how they re-ordered it, since the half-way-there re-order he saw last July when he was out here. They still have a ways to go with the altar rail, you see a sort of intact rail, but the other side consisted hap hazard "stuff." [Cuz I can't spell prie-dieu right now for diddly.]
Is there some sort of Latin Mass Priest pact that the rest of us chumps are unaware of? When Fr. Sean was out here, I couldn't hear the canon. The most glorious canon written and I couldn't hear him for squat. Bah-humbug!!! I had my missal, but Father DUDES, if you're going to do this PLEASE SAY IT SO WE CAN HEAR IT. This priest -SAME THING. Otherwise you may as well say it in Sanskrit, or slaughter a pig. Can't tell the difference. I was discussing TLM with a friend of mine, and unprovoked she had similar thoughts. [She's in her early 60s. She said "it's too hard to try and figure out where Father is, even when you have a missal. I have to try and see his gestures, and try to find the right place in the missal, too hard without aural cues."]
I did bag one of the two seats acceptable for viewing purposes, so that was okay. And I have to say I enjoyed how well the servers executed their tasks. So easy to do it WELL with a bit of effort. Thoroughly unlike the two boys to served the NO rite Mass I attended Sat. Like chalk and cheese. I have seen many well excuted NO Masses - St. John's the Evangelist's servers, San Diego, are uniformly excellent from what I've seen - they PERFECTLY have the "symmetry thing" down - so I don't want to hear "well, the EF servers are better, blah, blah." But it irritates when servers aren't held to a high standard.
Also, you know it would REALLY help if in the bulletin for an EF parish, they'd be print out in advance WHAT readings are done. If you insist on not doing them in English, there is NO WAY you can convince me the Mass goer staring into space at that time has a freakin' clue. One thing to know the unchangeable parts of the Mass - quite another to be able to get the Latin on the fly with no advance warning. [Also this particular priest did largely SILENT offertory prayers too. GRRRRR!!!!]
They have Mass with benediction Fri nights, so maybe I'll go down there - but the "silent" thing is a real barrier for me. Darn good thing the FIRST canon done wasn't a silent one, otherwise none of us would have ever had a clue.
