Your Excellency:
Thank you for giving us the Tridentine Mass at the beautiful St. Francis de Sales church.
I grew up, mostly, in the Novus Ordo Missae. Over the past 30 years, I have seen the Mass go from a reverent, prayerful worship of God, to a social gathering, to, now, something that seems more like a baseball game. I use Perpetual Adoration, the daily Rosary, and novenas to pray, because prayer during Mass has become almost impossible. It’s all about man.
Yesterday, my family attended the High Mass at St. Francis. We were struck.. My catechumen wife is livid over the lack of sanctity witnessed witnessed at Sunday Mass . . . until yesterday. Because of her catechism on Sundays, we cannot attend the beautiful, reverent Mass most weeks. We have to sit in a bare, sterile church and listen modern music and liturgies that change Mass to Mass, week to week, celebrated primarily by non-priests.
My boys, preparing for Confirmation, have a difficult time understanding my teaching about reverence for the Holy Eurcharist when they see girls dressed like prostitutes grasping the Host, proferred by a man in demin shorts and Hawaiian shirt, in their dirty fingers and tossing it down like an antacid. Thanks to you and to God, yesterday, they understood when they knelt before the altar to receive communion from a priest.
Your Excellency, I pray that you will encourage our parishes to restore reverence and sanctity to our churches. Decorate them with reminders of our traditions and faith. Let every parish have one Latin Mass, Tridentine or Novus, every week. Say the Rosary before Mass. Get rid of the extraordinary ministers except where no priest is available. (At St. Ablan Roe on Sundays, it takes 7 minutes to situate the extraordinary ministers and only 5 minutes to distribute communion to the 200 faithful. Let’s take 15 minutes to receive communion from a priest.)
Finally, again, thank you, so much, for what you have done already by providing St. Louisans with the Tridentine Mass at St. Francis de Sales.
I will follow this e-mail with a letter to ensure it reaches your desk.
Sincerely, William Hennessy