UPDATE (1/26/16):
Friends from the Philippines have sent us the following pictures of the Traditional Latin Masses on January 25 and 26, and even the surprise announcement today at the International Eucharistic Congress, of Cardinal Zen's Mass.
1. Invitation to IEC delegates to attend the TLM of Cardinal Zen.
2. The Missa Prelatitia celebrated by H.E. Cardinal Zen on January 26, before a packed congregation:
3. Low Mass on January 25 in the Archdiocesan Shrine of San Pedro Calungsod:
4. In addition to the previously-announced Masses, a Sung Mass will be offered on January 27:
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Originally posted 1/25/16 @ 10:45 AM GMT.
We have been informed by friends that two Traditional Latin Masses are scheduled at the sidelines of the 51st International Eucharistic Congress, which runs in Cebu City, Philippines from January 24 to 31. Both were organized by Ecclesia Dei Society of Saint Joseph or Una Voce Philippines.
The same friends inform us that the 51st IEC is being turned into a carnival of attacks against the Congregation for Divine Worship combined with further calls for liturgical "inculturation" in order to make the Roman Rite -- that is, the Novus Ordo --- even more non-Western and "indigenous". The following Traditional Masses, which recall the long and glorious history of Catholicism in the Philippines, ought to be reminders that what is truly holy and beautiful can and will resist any and all attempts to make them the creatures of fashion, age, and the ephemeral winds of what nowadays passes for "culture".
Friends from the Philippines have sent us the following pictures of the Traditional Latin Masses on January 25 and 26, and even the surprise announcement today at the International Eucharistic Congress, of Cardinal Zen's Mass.
1. Invitation to IEC delegates to attend the TLM of Cardinal Zen.
2. The Missa Prelatitia celebrated by H.E. Cardinal Zen on January 26, before a packed congregation:
3. Low Mass on January 25 in the Archdiocesan Shrine of San Pedro Calungsod:
4. In addition to the previously-announced Masses, a Sung Mass will be offered on January 27:
______________________________________________________
Originally posted 1/25/16 @ 10:45 AM GMT.
We have been informed by friends that two Traditional Latin Masses are scheduled at the sidelines of the 51st International Eucharistic Congress, which runs in Cebu City, Philippines from January 24 to 31. Both were organized by Ecclesia Dei Society of Saint Joseph or Una Voce Philippines.
The same friends inform us that the 51st IEC is being turned into a carnival of attacks against the Congregation for Divine Worship combined with further calls for liturgical "inculturation" in order to make the Roman Rite -- that is, the Novus Ordo --- even more non-Western and "indigenous". The following Traditional Masses, which recall the long and glorious history of Catholicism in the Philippines, ought to be reminders that what is truly holy and beautiful can and will resist any and all attempts to make them the creatures of fashion, age, and the ephemeral winds of what nowadays passes for "culture".
1. A Low Mass for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on January 25, 6:30 pm in the Shrine of San Pedro Calungsod, located within the grounds of the Palace of the Archbishop of Cebu, D. Jakosalem Street, Cebu City.
2. A Missa Prelatitia to be offered in the afternoon of January 26 by His Eminence, Joseph Cardinal Zen, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong. This is believed to be the first Traditional Mass to be celebrated publicly in the Philippines by a Cardinal since the liturgical reform of 1970.
Interestingly the official news website of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP News) has published a very positive article on the Traditional Latin Mass to be celebrated by Cardinal Zen:
IEC speaker to celebrate Traditional Latin Mass:
CEBU CITY, January 24, 2016 – Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun, SDB, DD of Hong Kong will celebrate the votive Mass of the Most Blessed Sacrament, according to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, on January 26, at 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon at Asilo de Milagrosa, Gorordo Avenue in this city.
The Bishop emeritus of Hong Kong has been known to celebrate the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite also known as the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). In May 2006, Zen publicly offered a Pontifical High Mass. He has since celebrated the TLM regularly.
Zen is also scheduled to deliver a “testimony” on the first day of the International Eucharistic Congress currently being held here.
Societas Eccelsia Dei Sancti Ioseph (Ecclesia Dei Society of St. Joseph) – Una Voce Philippines organized and sponsored the TLM to be celebrated by the cardinal.
Papal document
Pope Benedict XVI’s motu propio Summorum Pontificum, dated July 7, 2007 and implemented since Sept. 14, 2007, liberated the celebration of the TLM throughout the Latin rite of the Church. It effectively supplanted the provision of St. John Paul II’s motu proprio Ecclesia Dei of 1988, which allowed individual bishops to establish places where Mass could be said using the 1962 Missal.
“In my experience, the young who attend the TLM find that it challenges them to delve more deeply into the Catholic faith. The young like to be challenged after all!”, said Catholic blogger Carlos Antonio Palad.
He said Latin does not deter non-Latin speakers from attending the TLM saying it (TLM) “has been a part of Filipino life for 450 years.”
“Even when Mass was still in Latin, our ancestors assiduously attended it,” he said.
He lamented that to say that the TLM is too “Western” for Filipinos to understand or appreciate “greatly underestimates the continuing ability of the Filipino to absorb and understand what the Church really has to offer from her spiritual treasures.”
‘Sense of the sacred’
Palad said TLM attendance in the Philippines has been growing through the years since the implementation of Summorum Pontificum. “When Summorum Pontificum was promulgated in 2007, there were only three places in the Philippines that had the TLM with the bishops’ permission. Today there are 14 places with every Sunday Mass plus some other places with monthly or weekday Masses,” he said.
He added that the attendees are mostly “very young and enthusiastic.”
“Some of them are rich, many are poor, all are refreshed by the unapologetic faith that the TLM radiates. This is not surprising”, he added.
Palad, who is also an apologetics speaker of the Defensores Fidei Foundation, said the worshipper finds in the TLM “a form of worship where the Church does not try to get along with the times.” He added that with the set rubrics of the TLM, there is no room for innovation, just “unabashed adoration and Catholic identity with no attempts to make it more ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ or more acceptable to modern tastes.”
Dean Louis Bascon, a 25-year old teacher of Paco Catholic School, will travel to Cebu to attend this once in a lifetime celebration of the TLM.
He says he is drawn to the TLM because of “the sense of reverence, the sense that something great is really happening right in front of me, what people actually call the sense of the sacred, the very clear feeling that you are encountering the Lord Himself.”
Even though he would need to spend for the trip to Cebu to attend the TLM of Cardinal Zen, he says “It makes me feel how universal the Church is in her scope, but still bounded by the one sacrifice of the Mass, the unity of which is more clearly evident in the one language of Latin.” (Rommel Lopez / CBCP News)
