B
bardegaulois
Guest
Traditionally, after the EF Easter Vigil, our celebrating priest and our senior servers repair to a suitable place to have a cigar together and to recap our performance over the Triduum. This year, we went a little beyond that in order to discuss planning for the future. We all love a good Solemn Mass of course, but we seldom have the opportunity to get all the necessary clergy in one place at the same time, as all the priests in the diocese with any sort of interest in the EF have their own pastoral work to do. A man in diaconal formation, however, has taken an interest in participating in the EF upon his ordination. That just leaves us the matter of the subdeacon to address in order to have more frequent Solemn Masses.
Yes, I know that the order of subdeacons has been suppressed. However, at the same time Pope Paul suppressed the order, it looks like he fused the subdeacon’s functions into the instituted ministries (formerly minor orders) of lector and acolyte. The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei has ruled that instituted acolytes may serve as subdeacons at Solemn Mass, with some minor modifications. However, you don’t often come across instituted acolytes outside of seminaries.
So I got to thinking whether it might not be prudent for some of our senior servers such as myself (generally men in their 30s or 40s, both married and unmarried) to petition the bishop for institution – or otherwise to ask the priests charged with the EF to float the idea by the bishop, asserting an important pastoral reason (the Solemn Mass being the normative form of Mass in the Roman Rite). Non-seminarian instituted ministers are quite rare, to be sure, but institution of laymen for these functions is not without precedent. The Diocese of Lincoln in Nebraska, I know, does so, and likely several other dioceses do as well.
Of course, this will be at the bishop’s discretion, but it seems to me that this might be the best way to regularize more Solemn Masses in dioceses where available priests are few and available priests who want to have anything to do with the Extraordinary Form are almost non-existent. Any thoughts about this potential undertaking?
Yes, I know that the order of subdeacons has been suppressed. However, at the same time Pope Paul suppressed the order, it looks like he fused the subdeacon’s functions into the instituted ministries (formerly minor orders) of lector and acolyte. The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei has ruled that instituted acolytes may serve as subdeacons at Solemn Mass, with some minor modifications. However, you don’t often come across instituted acolytes outside of seminaries.
So I got to thinking whether it might not be prudent for some of our senior servers such as myself (generally men in their 30s or 40s, both married and unmarried) to petition the bishop for institution – or otherwise to ask the priests charged with the EF to float the idea by the bishop, asserting an important pastoral reason (the Solemn Mass being the normative form of Mass in the Roman Rite). Non-seminarian instituted ministers are quite rare, to be sure, but institution of laymen for these functions is not without precedent. The Diocese of Lincoln in Nebraska, I know, does so, and likely several other dioceses do as well.
Of course, this will be at the bishop’s discretion, but it seems to me that this might be the best way to regularize more Solemn Masses in dioceses where available priests are few and available priests who want to have anything to do with the Extraordinary Form are almost non-existent. Any thoughts about this potential undertaking?
