Mass at Brompton Oratory:

I already wrote this once, but Blogger crashed, so this will be abit condensed.

I went to Mass at Brompton Oratory this morning. The was built shortly after the end of the persecution of Roman Catholics in England and was bult to be an eightenth century showplace. So it is very baroque, very ornate, very beautiful in a cluttered sort of way.

The Mass was actually a Latin High Mass with the singing and the incense and was very beautiful. The choir was lovely and even the priests (and there were four officiating and at least a half a dozen others serving) had decent voices. The service itself was very conservative, with a communion rail, no lay servers, and the priest turned around away from the congregation.

The priest who gave the sermon said that the church was not diocesan; rather the priests who serve in their order serve there for life, which explains how they were able to have so many priests at one Mass. They also get no diocesan money, but it was pretty crowded and the parishoners looked well-off, so that may not be so bad for them.

The Latin was beautiful, but I like the idea of lay servers and the priest facing the congregation and there's no way that there are enough priests to implement this kind of thing on a large scale anyway. Apparently, though, there's talked the JP2 will release a document containing guidance on the language of the Church and the rumor is that he will advocate a partial return to Latin. Maybe one Mass at most churches, or at least Masses at pilgrimage churches at which members of the congregation might speak upwards of twenty languages would be said in Latin.

I'm interested to see what happens with this.