Mass in Vienna

[JRRTFAN]

I will be in Vienna, Austria in a couple of weeks on a Sunday. I want to attend Mass but have seen many bizarre videos of Austriam Masses with giant stuffed animals, clowns, laity giving homily, Liturgical dance, etc.

I don’t want to encounter something from the Twilight Zone.

Has anybody been there and come back with a recommendation for me?

 

[dafrenchman]

Allo

I attended mass at Stephansdom once and also at nearby St-Peter chuch.
All seemed well enough even though I don’t speak the language.

Have a good trip!

 

[Symeon]

It’s been years since I’ve lived there, so things may have changed, but these parishes would be good bets:

Stephansdom, (The Cathedral)

Karlskirche (St. Charles Borromeo)

St. Peter

St. Barbara - the Ukrainian-Greek-Catholic parish - definitely no liturgical shenanigans there, if you are interested in visiting a Byzantine Catholic liturgy.

All within close proximity to one another in the old city (the central 1st district).

One I’m not so sure about
Augustinerkirche, (St. Augustine, near the Hofburg palace). As of the early 90s, they had a wonderful Latin Novus Ordo. Music for the Mass was usually Mozart/ Haydn with choir and orchestra. Not sure what it’s like now.

If you have time to travel, you might try Stift Heiligenkreuz, Holy Cross Monastery, the Cistercian monastery a little outside the city in the Vienna woods.

 

[JRRTFAN]

Just for the record on this post I made some time ago.

I ended up at 11:00 mass at St. Stephens’s - the Cathedral - last Sunday. It was a Tridentine Latin mass with no shenanigans whatsoever. The experience was illustrative of the value of a Latin mass. People from all over were able to worship in a common language. Imagine, no ushers and all the people were able to make it to the communion rail to kneel for communion on the tongue.

When that mass was over we spied colorfully dressed musicians coming into the cathedral so decided to stay on a whiile and see what happened (this was a group with horns and etc. not guitars and tambourines). Then began a normal mass of the novus ordo. No shenanigans here either. I heard the first solidly Catholic homily I’ve heard in years. The monsignior was preaching on political correctness its pitfalls. He was very into it and emphatic for 20 minutes, I have not heard the like of it in an American parish. The entire Cathedral was packed for tyhis noon mass.

A very interesting experience indeed.

 

[Symeon]

Thanks for reporting back. Glad to hear things are going well at Stephansdom.