Friday, February 22, 2019

Pontifical Low Mass and Confirmations in Detroit

On Sunday, February 10th, His Excellency Donald Hanchon, Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit, celebrated the first Sunday Mass in the traditional rite in decades at Detroit’s Old St Mary’s Parish, followed by Confirmations, also in the old rite. The church hosts a regular High Mass each First Friday at 7:00 pm; on this occasion, the Oakland County Latin Mass Association was able to have the Mass here because its regular Sunday venue, the Chapel of the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Bloomfield Hills, was being used for another event that day. The archdiocese online newspaper The Detroit Catholic wrote a nice article about the Mass, quoting Mons. Ronal Brown, Judicial Vicar of the Detroit Archdiocese and chaplain of the OCLMA. “The Oakland County Latin Mass Association has only been in existence since 2013, started by laypeople who petitioned the archbishop and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to recognize the organization and have Masses. ... Most of the (regular) congregation at Sacred Heart is under 40 years of age. I’ve asked some of the younger people why they choose to worship in this form, and they tell me there is a deep reverence in the celebration. They said there is something comforting with the routine, the ritual.” Thanks to reader Alex Begin for bringing this to our attention, and photographer Paul Duda.

The famous Confirmation “slap”.

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