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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Police CAN arrest a knife-wielding citizen without killing him

The OC Weekly’s Nick Schou has a telling story on how Newport Beach cops confronted a kitchen knife-wielding 22-year-old man and defused the situation, getting him to drop the knife without killing him.

They contrast that sensible action with last year’s killing of poor little Ashley MacDonald, the teenager whom Huntington Beach shot to death in a park because she was wielding a pen knife.

Anyone with any common sense knows that a 22-year-old man is about the most dangerous there is. He’s at his physical peak and the testosterone is flowing like mad. Yet the N.B. cops acted sensibly. They really were public servants.

By contrast, a teenage girl is weak and can easily be dealt with. It makes no sense to kill her. Yet the Huntington Beach cops got away with their action. County prosecutors let them off.

The OC Weekly has the right conclusion:

Huntington Beach’s finest might want to consider having a quick chat with Newport Beach Police Officer John Mika and his partners.

(That was going to be the end of my post. But as I was linking to that picture of beautiful Ashley, I was affected by it. She had some problems, but would have gotten over them. She would have met a nice guy, gotten married, had some kids. She would have been a great mom.)

More Independence Day dependence

Steven Greenhut rounded up some stories on police over-presence on Independence Day, which is supposed to mark our independence from tyranny, not our dependence on it. He begins with my piece, then adds:

The Register had a piece on Wednesday about Newport Beach’s “safety enhancement zone” — a highly patrolled area where police cracked down on even minor incidents of misbehavior. In the quiet city where I live, police were prominently featured on motorcycles and in squad cars, just in case the parents and kids assembled there got out of hand.

Obviously, there needs to be some security in case some things get out of hand, but America has moved heavily toward the Orwellian idea of “ordered liberty,” in which we all shuffle along under the watchful eye of armed and aggressive government officials.

Kind of ironic on July 4th, no?

I remember July 4 celebrations back in Michigan in the 1960s, when riots were breaking out. In our city of Wayne there was no such police presence as I saw yesterday in Huntington Beach, or occurred in other cities in modern California. The police’ main job was to make sure the parade floats didn’t crash into one another.

Fireworks were completely illegal in Michigan, not just our city, except for sparklers. But the cops were pretty lenient. If they caught you with illegal fireworks, bootlegged in from Canada or California or Oklahoma, they would just confiscate the fireworks (and probably let their own kids set them off the next day). The attitude was, “Kids will be kids.”

The cops then were a part of the community. They didn’t mess with you unless you did something really bad.

The same thing was true when we took a trip out to California when I was eight, in 1963. On July 4, we visited my Great Uncle Fred in Orange. He was a U.S. Navy veteran of both World War I and World War II. He retired to San Diego, then Orange, then some years later to Hemet.

Back then, all sorts of fireworks were legal in California, including in Orange. My brother and I blew up a good part of his front lawn. “Don’t worry, boys,” Uncle Fred chuckled, “it’ll grow back.” I guess if you’ve been in two world wars, a few firecrackers don’t faze you.

The cops never came around. And it wasn’t just because they didn’t want to tangle with a wise old Navy veteran.

It was called freedom.

Huntington Beach police harass my friends and me

11:24 p.m., July 4, 2007 — HUNTINGTON BEACH — I witnessed first hand tonight the discourtesy and disregard of citizens’ rights by Huntington Beach police.

Two events happened. The first I did not witness. The second I did. Both occurred at the house of my friends in Huntington Beach.

The first incident occurred about 7:15 p.m. Several of my friends told me what happened. My friends were playing with water ballons. An unmarked van pulled up and four police piled out. They began harassing my friends about the water balloons. (Water balloons!) My friends were not drinking nor shooting off fireworks. Their child was frightened and ran into the house, then into the alley. Two friends walked into the house.

“Where did that kid go!” barked one of the cops. “Get him out here.” The “kid” is almost 30. The man and woman came back out.

One of cops was thumbing his billy club, as if eager to use it. The cops kept asking a lot of questions. My friends pointed out that water balloons are not illegal. Eventually, the cops left.

I came over shortly after that. We walked down to the beach to witness the great fireworks the city shot from the end of the pier. Then we walked back to my friends’ house.

I was there when five cops came walking up the alley behind the house at about 10:45 p.m. Five cops. They were looking for someone shooting off illegal fireworks. Some fireworks were shot off earlier a block away — but not by my friends. One cop walked inside my friends’ back gate, violating their property rights and privacy rights. He looked in their house. Seeing nothing, he walked back outside.

Then the cops shined their flashlights on the pavement, looking for signs of fireworks use. There was nothing to see. They shined their flashlights inside my car, which was parked in the alley, and saw only my usual jumble of books and newspapers. Finally, they walked up the street.

They never were nice about anything in either incident. They acted as if they were troops bashing down doors of suspected insurgents in Iraq. For crying out loud, the most they were looking for were misdemeanors involving fireworks. For that they had to march around like stormtroopers?

The water balloon incident was completely uncalled for. As to the fireworks, one cop could have been sent around to see if he could witness someone shooting off something, then issue a ticket. It’s on the same level as jaywalking. Many kinds of fireworks even are legal in Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, and other cities in Orange County.

These incidents show, once again, why more supervision of police is needed. Senate Bill 1019, by state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, needs to be brought back and passed. It would “provide some public access to police officer misconduct cases.”

Obviously, SB 1019 is needed to shine a light on such horrors as the shooting, by Huntington Beach police, of poor Ashley MacDonald, as my former colleague Steven Greenhut explained.

But oversight also is needed to prevent the common harassment of citizens such as I witnessed tonight. If police are unaccountable, they figure they can get away with anything.

Of course, they should realize that local and state failure to institute proper oversight is not the end of matters. A federal judge could intervene and take over the Huntington Beach Police Department, just as Judge Henderson has taken over the California prisons’ health care system.

And the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice could conduct a full-scale investigation of the HBPD, walking in and checking every file that’s there. Unlike with Scooter Libby, there won’t be any clemency from the president.

The second Rodney King beating trial was a federal trial and it found four LAPD officers guilty. It could happen here.

It’s especially ironic that these two incidents occurred on Independence Day, when we celebrate our liberties — the ones we used to have, anyway.