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Post by iagosan on Dec 4, 2023 12:46:27 GMT
St. Peter`s Rome. 8am Sunday December 3rd 2023.
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Post by tisbearself on Dec 4, 2023 13:05:53 GMT
I pray daily for the return of the individual Masses to St Peter's for some time now. It was an awesome experience to attend one years ago, and I would add that the one I attended was an OF in English, and there were other OFs as well as Eastern Rite liturgies going on too, they weren't all in Latin.
I hope the next Pope will reverse this so that St Peter's can once again have that golden hour as a church before all the tourists swarm in and the guides yell at you if you stop to pray in front of their tour group.
It must feel very dystopian to pray in an empty St Peter's.
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Post by homeschooldad on Dec 5, 2023 17:38:22 GMT
That link won't work for me. Here is an earlier article (again, when the NCReporter is just doing straight-up news, they're as good a source as any) that puts some color on it: www.ncronline.org/vatican/why-vatican-restricting-private-masses-st-peters-basilicaWhile Masses sine populo are not the ideal, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with them, and in any case, you always have hosts and choirs of angels and saints assisting at them, so they are far from being "private". And a Mass with at least one altar server is not sine populo. |
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Post by tisbearself on Dec 5, 2023 18:39:21 GMT
Technically, none of those individual Masses that were being held in St. Peter's were "private Masses". The Masses were all open to whatever public wanted to mush on down there before the sun was up to go through the checkpoint, get into the church, and attend. A "private Mass" is one not open to the public, so it would only be private if somehow a priest were saying Mass in there at a time when the public weren't allowed in. My understanding was that the individual Masses were limited to a couple of hours generally early in the morning before St. Peter's opened for tours, etc. but after the place was opened to the public who wanted to come in on their own. It was essentially prayer time, also the staff would be going around in the background filling up the big holy water fonts and that sort of thing (which didn't affect the Masses going on due to the size of the whole place, they were far away from the altars in use).
I was there with a pilgrimage group and I vaguely recall that we may have had a couple people who were just sightseeing join in our Mass, as usually happens whenever you're having a Mass with a pilgrimage group that's in a place where sightseers can see you're having it and join in. Furthermore, the reason all those altars were originally put in were so that priests could say Masses at them. They weren't just installed to be looked at.
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Post by tth1 on Dec 9, 2023 18:35:31 GMT
It's all about the current agenda from Rome to have absolute centralised control. That's why I know this synodality process is a nonsense. Rome, under the current pontificate, is never going to give up a single shred of its power. Currently Rome wants rigid uniformity no matter the spiritual damage it may cause. Priests may celebrate Mass sine populo if there is good cause* and Saint John Paul II said a priest wanting to celebrate a daily Mass is sufficent cause*. Many priests don't have a congregation. In the Vatican there's a very large number of them - they work in the curias of the Holy See and Diocese of Rome. A Mass is called private if it's not been published and no congregation is anticipated. They're not private in the sense that no one else can go. Plus, the priest is never alone. Huge numbers of angels will always be in attendance, too. I'm not sure where the rule is but I'm 99.99999% certain there is one that says no priest is to be forced to concelebrate.
*I'm paraphrasing, not attempting to use these terms in their precise canonical sense.
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Post by tisbearself on Dec 9, 2023 19:22:11 GMT
St. Peter's has numbers of people stopping in it during its entire open hours, so unless there's a pandemic happening, any Mass in there can anticipate having a congregation, even if it's one or two people. As for the Masses being published, it was public knowledge in previous years that during certain early morning hours, priests would be saying individual Masses in St Peter's open to the public. Which priests and how many Masses on a given day varied, but they'd be happening out in the open. No different than a Mass at any parish church at 9 am and whoever wants to attend can just walk in.
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