The problem is, at least in San Antonio, there are no traditional Catholic parishes with a reverent liturgy. I cannot emphasize that enough.He then referred to an older post on Catholic Answers speaking about Our Lady of the Atonement:
While I was in dental school in San Antonio, I was a parishioner of Oru Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church (3 out of my 4 years in school). It was heaven on earth. I literally pined away for Sunday to hurry and get here. I took a friend who was entering the Jesuits to church there, and he said, “THAT’S how Mass should be EVERY time, EVERYWHERE!”. . . . They have a Latin Novus Ordo Mass in the evening, but their signature Mass is the Anglican Use High Mass. The architecture is magnificent (and growing in size), and the artwork truly brings you into a prayerful state of mind.Naturally, I can't speak for the situation in San Antonio, or anywhere else, for that matter. But the first point I would make is that in the Archdiocese of LA, often thought of as quite liberal, when we got fed up with the parish closest to home, the first one we tried, a 15-minute drive away, had a hard-cover missal with something like 800 hymns, servers in red cassocks and surplices, an organ and choir with paid section leaders, cantors of operatic quality, and a reverent atmosphere with inspiring clergy. (Come to think of it, the marble altar/reredos at our parish is nicer than the one at OLW in yesterday's post.) We've had no cause to go looking elsewhere, but if we did, my understanding from our friends is that there are other comparable parishes in the area.
We go to Napa, CA frequently, and when there, we go to St John the Baptist. This is a little more casual, the architecture more 1970s, but it's a good, friendly place, and if we lived in Napa, I'm sure we'd be very happy at that parish.
I've had fairly regular e-mails from others who are now, or have been in the past, parishioners at OLA, and at least two felt it had a bad atmosphere and typically held on for only as long as they had kids in the school there.
But a second point I'd make is that, for all the stress the Catholic press puts on the DW services at, basically, the two biggest Texas parishes, the rest of the 34 (by the published total in the current story) communities are nothing like those. A number have guitar masses, and the groups are more typically two dozen people in a basement chapel or cafeteria. I would question how many of the full parishes outside of Texas can even have paid choirs.
The problem is that Catholic media is complicit in building a fantasy of the ordinariates that they alone have reverent masses, and the only alternative is to find a Latin mass. This is simply false and destructive and feeds the purist-separatist traddy view. When we got fed up with Dan Schutte masses and happy-birthday-Jesus, we got off our butts and found something better not far away. I can't imagine our situation is unique.
I'll be on retreat for the next few days, and so I won't be posting until next week.
