There was something almost quaint about the scene in rural Minnesota.
A few Catholics gathered at the Opole Pub on August 29 to discuss bringing the traditional Latin Mass back to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church. The next day, because they apparently had no church available to them, an SSPX priest offered Mass at the Opole Ballpark Pavilion.
A pub meeting. A ball field. The old Mass.
This was enough to produce a formal episcopal letter.
On September 2, Bishop Patrick Neary of Saint Cloud warned his flock against supporting SSPX activities, inviting Society priests to offer the sacraments, or participating in their events. Such behavior, he wrote, could place Catholics “at risk of separating themselves from full communion with the Church.”
That language deserves attention.
So does what is happening around it.
Neary’s letter cannot simply be dismissed as a bishop inventing canon law. Rome itself changed the situation dramatically this summer.
On July 1, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops at Écône without a papal mandate after Leo had asked the Society to cancel the consecrations. Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta acted as principal consecrator, with Bishop Bernard Fellay assisting. The SSPX insisted beforehand that the new bishops would claim neither ordinary jurisdiction nor a parallel authority and said their dossiers had been presented to Leo.
The next day Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith dropped the hammer. Its explanatory note declared SSPX sacred ministers to be “in schism,” warned that laymen who formally adhere to the Society can be considered schismatic and excommunicated, and declared SSPX confessions and marriages invalid.
So Neary’s description of the Society as recently declared schismatic is substantially accurate.
That actually makes his letter more interesting.
Because the Catholics of Opole were apparently searching for the traditional Mass amid a diocesan consolidation that has already hollowed out local parish life. The current Cross Rock Area Catholic Community website announces, in large letters, “Five Churches Becoming One Parish.” Its posted weekend Mass schedule lists Masses at Immaculate Conception in Rice, Holy Trinity in Royalton and St. Stanislaus in Bowlus.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Opole is one of the five churches.
There is no weekend Mass listed there.
Suddenly that gathering at the pub looks rather different.
These were not men plotting to storm the cathedral with Archbishop Lefebvre banners. Catholics attached to a church founded in 1887 were discussing how to get Mass back into their own parish. Their bishop answered by warning them away from the priests willing to come.
Neary acknowledges the anxiety caused by what he calls a time of “significant change” and urges the faithful instead to embrace the diocese’s All Things New reorganization. He points traditionalists toward authorized old-rite Masses elsewhere.
The symbolism is hard to improve upon.
The parish loses its regular Sunday Mass.
The faithful go looking for one.
A priest drives in and says the old Roman Mass in a baseball pavilion.
The chancery finds its stationery.
Continue reading at Hiraeth in Exile
TAKE ACTION: Contact Bishop Neary at Kristi.Stewart@gw.stcdio.org or 320-251-2340 and let him know what you think.