Students demand Latin Mass after rescript
Jenn Metz
Issue date: 10/10/07 Section: News
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After Pope Benedict XVI brought attention to the discontinued tradition of Latin Masses in early July, students began asking Campus Ministry to bring back the "Tridentine Mass" to Notre Dame. Starting Sunday, they will get their wish.
The students' demand and Benedict XVI's papal rescript - which states the Tridentine Mass is optional for Catholics - led Campus Ministry to decide to schedule the Latin Mass this year. The first of these Masses will be celebrated at 8 a.m. Sunday at the St. Charles Borromeo Chapel in Alumni Hall.
"In this document from Rome, they asked the pastors to make it available if there is a stable group of people who want it and if there are people who are able to do it," said Father Richard Warner, director of Campus Ministry.
Campus Ministry received more than 100 e-mails from students asking if the University would offer the Tridentine Mass after Benedict XVI released the document in early July, Warner said.
Brett Perkins, director of Protestant Student Resources and Catholic Peer Ministry at Campus Ministry, said some students even formed a Facebook group requesting the Tridentine Mass.
"We knew there was going to be a number of students who wanted this. We knew that stable community would be there," Perkins said.
Members of Campus Ministry met over the summer to decide how to respond to students' demand and the "motu proprio" (as the papal rescript is called, Latin for "of his own accord").
The Tridentine Mass will be celebrated at 8 a.m. most Sundays of the year at Alumni Hall because its chapel has a door that opens directly to the outside and has a high altar, which is also against the wall, making it possible for the priest to celebrate the Mass in the traditional way, Perkins said. In the Tridentine Mass, the priest faces the same direction of the people, toward the altar. The time was chosen so as to not interfere with previously scheduled Masses at the Basilica and in the chapels on campus.
The students' demand and Benedict XVI's papal rescript - which states the Tridentine Mass is optional for Catholics - led Campus Ministry to decide to schedule the Latin Mass this year. The first of these Masses will be celebrated at 8 a.m. Sunday at the St. Charles Borromeo Chapel in Alumni Hall.
"In this document from Rome, they asked the pastors to make it available if there is a stable group of people who want it and if there are people who are able to do it," said Father Richard Warner, director of Campus Ministry.
Campus Ministry received more than 100 e-mails from students asking if the University would offer the Tridentine Mass after Benedict XVI released the document in early July, Warner said.
Brett Perkins, director of Protestant Student Resources and Catholic Peer Ministry at Campus Ministry, said some students even formed a Facebook group requesting the Tridentine Mass.
"We knew there was going to be a number of students who wanted this. We knew that stable community would be there," Perkins said.
Members of Campus Ministry met over the summer to decide how to respond to students' demand and the "motu proprio" (as the papal rescript is called, Latin for "of his own accord").
The Tridentine Mass will be celebrated at 8 a.m. most Sundays of the year at Alumni Hall because its chapel has a door that opens directly to the outside and has a high altar, which is also against the wall, making it possible for the priest to celebrate the Mass in the traditional way, Perkins said. In the Tridentine Mass, the priest faces the same direction of the people, toward the altar. The time was chosen so as to not interfere with previously scheduled Masses at the Basilica and in the chapels on campus.