Mass riots at St. Mary’s by the Sea?

Even if you’re not Catholic, you might have heard about the Saga of the Latin Mass at St. Mary’s by the Sea Church in Huntington Beach. A summary is here.

At a minimum, it shows the power of bloggers as agents of change, as they said in the 1960s. Only now, the change is back to tradition.

The latest, shown in the bulletin reproduced below, is that the Tridentine Mass scheduled to be restored there on Sept. 16 and the Noon Mass will not use the recent readings, but will use the old readings from the 1962 missal.

But, strangely, Bishop Tod Brown has warned, in the paraphrase of Pastor Tran:

for those who are not parishoners at St. Mary’s by the Sea: either geographically or not from our parish (visitors are OK), or intentionally not registered/willing being part of St. Mary’s by the Sea (but just coming for the Tridentine Mass), they should go back to their home parishes to request the Tridentine Mass or they can go to Mission San Juan Capistrano or Pope John Paul II Center to attend the Tridentine Mass celebrated there.”

The syntax is kind of mixed up, so it’s not clear what he means. And the problem has always been that those two existing Tridentine Masses are early in the morning and too far away for many people.

There’s another problem Fr. Tran doesn’t address: The geographical restriction would leave the Tridentine Mass only for the wealthy people who live in the 92648 area code, where the median housing price is around $900,000, according to Zillow. And anything more than a dinky apartment costs around $1.4 million.

So, say, a poor Latino or Vietnamese family from Garden Grove wants to take a short drive down Beach Blvd. to attend the Mass of Eternity at St. Mary’s. Instead they’re supposed to drive all the way down to San Juan Capistrano, burning up gas money they don’t have at $3.25 a gallon?

What’s really going to happen is obvious: The first restored Tridentine Mass will be swamped, including by the local media. The Register news section, for some reason, missed the story last year even though our Commentary blogs broke the story, allowing itself to be scooped by the L.A. Times on a well-known story right in their own back yeard. This time I expect a couple of Register reporters to attend.

But after all the fuss, I expect there won’t be any big deal. The Mass will be said in its ancient form. The next week, the media will be gone. The Mass will still be packed, leading to pressure for more Tridentine Masses in the diocese.

The Pope’s Motu Proprio says any priest can say the Tridentine Mass. But there’s still some leeway for the local bishop to limit its use. It also will be interesting to see how Cardinal Mahony follows Rome’s instructions over in his sprawling L.A. Archdiocese. My suspicion is that, with the abuse cases still occupying his life, he’s not going to want any more trouble and will grant liberal expansion of Tridentine Masses.

And as the old Latin saying has it, Roma locuta est, causa finita est. Rome has spoken, case closed.

It’s likely that, within a couple of years, or even months, the Tridentine Mass will be said as often as is demanded by the faithful in Orange County and elsewhere.

Introibo ad altare dei.

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