Any ideas to convince my college to offer the EF at least once?

[JReducation]

Organize a group of people who pray regularly the traditional office (Vespers, Compline), to show, that there is real need for the traditional liturgy.

This would be a good beginning.

This needs only permission from the administrator / pastor. The community prayer itself has it own value.

Since this is a college, there is no pastor involved. It would be the SGA and Campus Ministry that would have to approve.

[quotes]
If there is a steady group, you can petition the bishop; but do not expect that if there are a thousand regular churchgoers for 5 weekend Masses, that the petition of 10 would change one of those Masses to TLM.

Bishops have no jurisdiction in colleges. Colleges are either Catholic or other. If college is non-Cathlic, that speaks for itself.

If a college is Catholic, it’s usually run by a religious community or a lay coroporation. If they are run by a corporation, the bishop’s relationship to the college will be in the documents of incorporation. In some cases, the local bishop may be the chancellor. This gives him some authority. In other cases, he’s just a member of the board. That’s just one more vote.

If the college is run by a religious community, no bishop can touch it. The religious superior outranks the bishop. A bishop who interferes can find himself losing his faculties. The Holy Fathers are very protective of religoius communities of Pontifical Right. These belong to them and they guard them very jealously. This was the whole issue with the Francisans at Franciscan University.

The entire Franciscan order is protected by the pope. The pope is the only bishop who can tell them what to do. However, the students were very calm and very clever. They went to the bishop who told them that the Franciscan superior outranked him and invited them to come downtown. They didn’t like that. So they did something very clever. They asked the superior of the house at the university if he would allow them to invite a priest to celebrate a single OF in Latin for them so they could see it. Brother said that would be fine.

I don’t know how many attended and how many liked it. I do know that there were enough kids and teachers who liked it that they asked Brother again. He agreed again. Eventually, they asked Brother if one of the friars could celebrate it for them. Brother explained that he did not have the authority to order them to learn it, but he would ask if any wanted to learn it. One friar volunteered. Later they asked if they could have the mass in the Extraordinary Form and Brother agreed, if one of the friars wanted to do it.

I don’t know how often they do it. It’s not my community. Those are the TOR Franciscans and I’m an OSF Franciscan. We’re the same order of friars, but different obediences. However, I do know that they have it and that the friars are comfortable because it came in very slowly without intruding on the religious life of the friars on the campus. This is often the concern of religious communities that run colleges. They have to balance their work and their religious life.

The common belief before Vatican too, that the people’s participation and processes which dominate the new form was the form throughout Europe before the Reformation.

The Franciscans had a lot to do with this. They had a very simple form of the mass that St. Francis and the early friars received from Pope Innocent. They were a very large community. About 10% of their brothers were priests, so they had many.

Gradually, the Dominicans also grew in numbers and they brought with them the reforms made by Trent and Pius V. Eventually the secular clergy was better organized into dioceses as we now know them. The less formal Franciscan form evolved into the form that we refer to as the Tridentine form. People who don’t know history don’t know the connection and the process.

There are people who like the casual and informal, other require the formal, solemn forms. It was a mistake, that the old form with its formality was not kept.

I would agree. The formal was always part of the Latin Church, alongside the informal. While you had Franciscans celebrating masses outdoors on planks of wood over rocks, you also had the Benedictines celebrating very solemn liturgies in their abbey churches. Then there were many other forms and rites. I wonder if the fact that the Church merged all the forms into one reinforced this notion that one size fits all. When Vatican II rolled around, we went with that frame of mind.

As for your goal, I got an idea.

Put your money where your mouth is.

Offer $500 stipend for your priest for a mass (he chooses the date, to avoid any kind of resemblance of buying the Mass) for the intention to promote the Tridentine Mass. If you find 10 people thinking similarly like you, and each of you offer $50 a month, that could convince almost any priest that your intention is honest and serious.

I feel uncomfortable with this idea. I makes it look like money can buy you a priest and a mass. That’s neither truth nor ethical. I say, go with the slow introduction as they did at Franciscan University and several other Catholic universities.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[ProVobis]

I feel uncomfortable with this idea. I makes it look like money can buy you a priest and a mass. That’s neither truth nor ethical.

I agree. Even if it were ethical, which I don’t believe, it would not be sustainable in the long run. I’ve seen too much hype over an introduction of the EF, big crowds come in once or twice, and then the disappointment of diminishing interest sets in. As you say, better to go slow. Also don’t oversell, don’t shoot for a thousand people but continue to set the example of studying the Church’s treasures (plenty of youtube videos around), and be patient.