Tridentine Mass returns to San Jose Diocese

He...makes it clear that the sacrament is available outside of the scheduled times

If someone needs it, they can have access to the sacrament. He's very clear about that. We recipients also have to be responsible on the scheduling, we're the ones who know what we need. Arriving at the end of the scheduled time and expecting no line is, mmmm, hoping for the best.

It's not like most parishes are overflowing with priests twidddling their thumbs looking for something productive to do. They really are pretty busy.

"It's not like most parishes are overflowing with priests twidddling their thumbs looking for something productive to do. They really are pretty busy."

In Tokyo at Sophia University they have confession for two hours every day of the year.

Since returning to the states and arriving in Boise, I've been wondering just what it is that the priests do that keeps them so busy here.

Since returning to the states and arriving in Boise, I've been wondering just what it is that the priests do that keeps them so busy here.

Maybe they should do a 'ride along' like the cops so people have an idea what an average day looks like.

"Maybe they should do a 'ride along' like the cops so people have an idea what an average day looks like."

I think a little transparency of some sort would be appropriate.

This business of disappearing after Mass on Sunday and not surfacing again until 1530 on Saturday could be interpreted in a number of ways.

"Just to clarify a bit, while the chaplin is Fr Ottonello, the Rector of the Oratory is Fr Michael Wiener of nearby Oakland diocese. He is a priest of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest and carries the title of Episcopal Delegate for the Tridentine Rite for the Oakland diocese, which has the full support of Oakland bishop Vigneron for further expansion."

I have been attending Father Wiener's Sunday Tridentine Sung High Mass at St. Margaret Mary's in Oakland for the past 18 months. I really like it a LOT. The people who attend it take their Catholicism very seriously, which is rare in this day and age. I also enjoy hearing Father Wiener preach. The Church needs more priests like him (by the way, he is from Germany, so the "W" in his name is pronounced as a "V").

Confession is also taken very seriously at St. Margaret Mary's. There are two priests there, Father Wiener, and another priest who does 1 English, and 1 Latin Novus Ordo earlier in the day. The two priests switch off hearing confessions before and during each other's Masses. As a result, Confession is just about continuous on Sundays (the Tridentine Mass starts at 12:30). In fact, I went to confession today while Father Wiener was saying Mass (it is not a problem to fully participate in the Mass while standing/kneeling in line for Confession). During the Tridentine Mass, the line for Confession is quite long, which mirrors the experiences others have reported above.

Father Wiener will also be saying the 5:30pm Sunday Mass at the new Oratory in San Jose' (the two other Priests will be 3 Masses during the day before Father Wiener's 5:30). As a result, he is going to have a rather busy Sunday schedule from now on.

All in all, this is very good news for Traditional/Conservative Catholics in both the Oakland and San Jose's Diocese (they are right next to each other). Now, if we could just get the Diocese across the Bay from us, The Diocese of San Francisco, to allow the Tridentine Mass, we would be all set. However, none of us are holding our breath!!

:)

Either way, we will all be walking with Father Wiener in the March For Life demonstration through the City of San Francisco this coming Saturday (1/20). I ask all of your prayers as we carry the Pro-Life message through the heart of the most abortion-friendly city in the USA. Last year, it got a bit hairy as we marched through the belly of the beast, but the police did a very good job. Please pray for us as the 2007 event draws near (and if anyone is near the San Francisco Bay area, feel free to join us!!).

You wrote: "Since returning to the states and arriving in Boise, I've been wondering just what it is that the priests do that keeps them so busy here."

I have wondered the same thing about some priests.

Other priests work themselves to death. My former pastor was put into the hospital last year for exhaustion. He was literally working himself to death. His superiors told him to slow down and do a little less. His parishioners now try to watch out for him. None of that has really slowed him down much. Reminds me of St. John Neumann.

I know of a priest who, while his immediate superior seemed to be doing little, was saying Mass four times a day -- on weekdays!!!

I'm just wondering why interest in the Tridentine mass is so high, yet interest in the Sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation seems so low.

Because weekly confession is not necessary for salvation, nor is it physically possible for all Catholics. There are 400,000 priests in the world. If every confession was just 3 minutes long on average, absolving every Catholic weekly would require all priests to hear confessions 150 hours per week.

Confession is only necessary for salvation if one is committing mortal sin. If you are committing mortals sins every week, you probably have some pretty serious life issues, and just going to confess them all the time is probably not the answer. Confession is only effective if you've already resolved to change to life and are actually doing so.

Its nice to go to confession just for venial sins weekly or monthly, but we need to be aware of laying up burdens upon people that are apart from the Gospel. Regular reception of the Eucharist, and regular prayer, are more than sufficient to cure most of our venial faults.

We need to keep in mind that the first Christians managed to make it through life with usually just a single opportunity for confession after Baptism. Frequent confession was not widely practiced until at least 1000 years after the time of Christ.

In focusing on confession, I was merely pointing out that some have the desire to have the Tridentine mass for its aesthetic experience. While the heart of the Gospel is not about "Credo..." or "Dominus vobiscum..." rather, on the things of the heart.

We got the announcement about this at Mass last week when they let us know they were no longer going to have the Tridentine Mass on the first Saturday every month. I'm glad that Bishop McGrath is regularizing Fr. Ottonello's relationship to the diocese. He has been saying the Tridentine Mass in the diocese for years in a irregular manner.

The Society of Saint Pius X has, for many years, provided spiritual guidance and Holy Sacraments to the faithful attending Holy Mass at:

The Chapel of Our Mother of Perpetual Help

Located on the grounds of the Saint Aloysius Gonzaga Retreat Center,
19101 Bear Creek Road, Los Gatos, CA
Latin Mass times are:
Sunday - 8:00am & 10:00am (High Mass)
Daily - 7:15am
Saturday - 7:30am
The Saint Aloysius Gonzaga Retreat Center's telephone number is 408-354-7703

Inasmuch as the only holy priest who took public exception to the yet to be retracted blasphemy ( See below.) of Bishop Patrick McGrath, was a priest attached to the SSPX Chapel of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Los Gatos, it's curious the diocese's Santa Clara chapel bears the same name as the older and well established SSPX chapel in Los Gatos.

May the God Lord assist this bishop in overcoming his obvious lack of decorum, and propensity for pettiness.

To add to his bag of foibles, Bishop McGraw put a hold on any suggestion he was going 'traditional' by simultaneously proclaiming - in the same notice to every parish in the diocese about his copy-cat 'Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel' - a notice that he was directing a cease and desist command to Our Lady of Peace Parish in Santa Clara to halt the monthly Holy Latin Mass it had been celebrating since before the mockery created by Vatican II came into being.

For a bishop who boasts a knowledge of Canon Law, he sought to belittle the film "The Passion of The Christ" , by publicly declaring:

"While the primary source material of the film is attributed to the four gospels, these sacred books are not historical accounts of the historical events that they narrate. They are theological reflections upon the events that form the core of Christian faith and belief." ( San Jose Mercury News, 2/19/2004).

For one who is allegedly steeped in Canon Law, and the Sacred Dogma of the Holy Mother Church, the good bishop either intentionally or neglegently and falsely misled the faithful of Santa Clara County as well as the Mercury's readership throughout the nine county Bay Area Jose by denying Sacred Dogma:

The Catholic Church has always, clearly and infallibly, taught that the Holy Scriptures are historical accounts and has condemned the proposition that they are mere theological reflections. (See Pope St. Pius X's Decree "Lamentabili Sane, The Syllabus of Errors" Condemning the Errors of the Modernists, specifically #'s 3,16, 29, & 36).

Further, in paragraph 19 of The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), solemnly promulgated by His Holiness, Pope Paul VI on November 18th, 1965, it states:

“Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1).”

To this day, I can not find a retraction of those blasphemous words written in a daily newspaper by this man who insists upon wearing the mantle of shepard for the faithful of Santa Clara County.

Thanks to the good bishop we now have a second Chapel of Our Mother of Perpetual Help within Santa Clara County. Go figure.