Dear Bishop Adams
Hidden away on a country road in Hawke's Bay, in your diocese of Palmerston North, where there used to be a vineyard (when grapes were making money) is an ordinary domestic garage.
Only it is far from ordinary. Once a month it briefly houses not cars but the Son of God, called down upon a portable altar by a priest of the Society of St Pius X. The SSPX have served Hawke's Bay in this manner for fifteen years, with a lay brother usually driving the priest three hours from Whanganui and back again to do it. Or Father drives himself.
In the reverent silence of the Traditional Latin Mass, ducks can be heard quacking. Dogs barking. The sermon is riveting, the one hymn is sung a cappella because the organ's stopped working. The conversation is all outside after Mass, huddled under the small porch roof if it's raining, because before Mass everyone's in a hurry to get to confession. Even the family that travels from Wairoa. Every third Sunday.
"Everyone" is a motley crew, comprising toddlers to senior citizens - but no very elderly and infirm, because for them the access is sometimes damp, always difficult and the chairs eclectic, wobbly and crammed close together. The senior citizens were able to attend when the TLM was held at a funeral parlour in Hastings, but that arrangement fell through and now for them it's the Novus Ordo or nothing. Well, they could drive an hour or two to Ashhurst, to the diocesan Latin Mass which you, Bishop, so kindly provide at St Columba's.
The confessional at the garage is in a bedroom, with a makeshift grille for privacy. There's no seating for the waiting penitents - all the chairs at the back, in typical Catholic fashion, are already taken although they're mostly not sat on. Most kneel to pray the Rosary together before Mass, waiting for Father to finish hearing confessions and then robe in the tiny space in front of the altar, standing on the rug donated by a Massgoer which is the only covering on the concrete floor.
Except in Lent and Advent there are fresh flowers on the little altar. The wind whistles under the garage door (covered with bed sheets), and the other door has a high step (the area is prone to flooding) and at least one Massgoer regularly trips over the threshold. If the priest is tall as well as young (as SSPX priests are), he must take care at the elevation of the Host to avoid the garage door mechanism overhead.
At the last Mass, in September, visitors to Hawke's Bay who wanted to attend couldn't find the venue, located as it is down a long drive which must be driven over very slowly, not only because of potholes but because of Trevor Next Door, whose B&B guests object to being woken by cars passing (at 3 pm on a Sunday). But the visitors' no-show was providential: there was no room to squeeze any more into that garage.
 |
| Typical of the churches investigated in HB, this former Catholic Church in Clutha is to be relocated after sale by auction |
The thing is, your Excellency, that the owners of the garage and the local chap who often serves the Mass, have spent much time and money investigating church-friendly buildings from Dannevirke to Napier, in the hope of buying one. Currently there's an old unused church at Te Awanga, for sale for anything over $6000. The garage owners had an emergency fund of $2000 which they'd hoped one of the congregation - assumed to have a stash of cash - could match, and the rest contribute as they could. However, the putative donor turned out to have not a brass razoo of her own to offer.
The other thing is, Bishop, that there's a disused Catholic church just ten minutes away in Hastings. And is there a sadder sight in New Zealand today, when the need for the Sacrifice of the Mass is most dire, than that of a disused Catholic church? It must be more hurtful to the eyes of a good shepherd like yourself than to those of your flock.
Pope Leo XIV has recently called for the Catholic Church to be an ‘open house’ with no ‘judging’. He wants 'a safe space where everyone has a place — a community that accompanies and never excludes; that listens without judging; and that draws near without fear'. lifesitenews.com/news/pope-leo-
As you know, Excellency, "... the spiritual man judgeth all things..." (1 Cor 2:15). So Pope Leo's call could reasonably be judged to mean that faithful Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass - the Mass that bred and fed all the saints for hundreds of years - are allowed a 'safe space' within the Diocese of Palmerston North. As things are, at the sight of this garage any safety officer would have conniptions and the very elderly have rightly decided it is unsafe for them.
Some in Palmerston North Diocese may be sorry to see you saddled with the difficulties of a garageful of faithful Catholics in search of a church to hear Mass. They may think you have far weightier matters to consider, and it's a crying shame, beyond belief, that this situation exists. But you know, Bishop, by reason of your apostolic calling to the episcopacy - for which prayers are offered by at least one of these Latin Massgoers every day - the value of the Sacrifice of Calvary.
In that garage, on that country road in Hawke's Bay during the Holy Mass, "we kneel amid a multitude of holy Angels, who are present at the Adorable Sacrifice with reverential awe" (St Leonard). Those Angels deserve better. And He in whose presence they veil their faces deserves the best we can afford to give Him. A small and simple church.
Thank you, Bishop Adams.
No comments:
Post a Comment