Laudetur Iesus Christus on this the fifth day within the Octave of Christmas and the feast of St. Thomas Beckett, bishop and martyr. We post below the Latin Mass schedule for the next few days. As a reminder, St. Ann will not have a Latin Mass today at 6pm due to the priests being away.

Thursday December 30

• St. Thomas Aquinas will offer a special 10am High Mass (the normal 7pm Latin Mass is canceled)

Friday December 31 & Plenary Indulgence (see below)

• St. Ann parish: CANCELLATION: The 7am Low Mass is cancelled for this day only
• St. Mark 12:30pm Low Mass will be offered as normal

Saturday January 1 – feast of the Circumcision & Plenary Indulgence (see below)

• Our Lady of Grace, Greensboro, 12 midnight High Mass (1.5 hours north of Charlotte)
• St. John the Baptist, Tryon, NC 12 midnight Latin Mass (2 hours west of Charlotte)
• St. Ann, Charlotte – 9am Low Mass (followed by Confessions until 12 noon)
• St. Thomas Aquinas, Charlotte – 10am High Mass (followed by monthly blessing of religious objects)
• Our Lady of the Lake, Chapin, SC – 1:30pm Low Mass (2 hours south of Charlotte)

FYI: The midnight Masses of January 1 are on the late evening of December 31 and begin at midnight January 1.

Wednesday January 5 – Vigil of Epiphany

• St. Ann, Charlotte – 6:00pm Low Mass (followed by blessing of Epiphany Holy Water, a 45-minute blessing)  Note: Please only bring EMPTY water bottles/containers. The priest will bless the parish’s large water containers and laity can fill up their empty containers with the blessed water from the large fonts.

Thursday January 6 – Feast of the Epiphany

• St. Ann, Charlotte – 6pm High Mass
• St. Thomas Aquinas, Charlotte – 7pm High Mass
• Our Lady of the Lake, Chapin, SC – 6:30pm Low Mass, followed by blessing of chalk and salt (2 hours south of Charlotte), 

Plenary Indulgence for December 31 & January 1:

There is a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions offered on the last day and first day of the year when one takes part in the recitation of the Te Deum hymn (Friday December 31) and the Veni Creator (Saturday January 1) in a church or oratory. The former is recited in thanksgiving for the blessings the past year, and the latter is to ask for divine assistance for the coming new year. Learn more here: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2012/12/plenary-indulgence-reminders-te-deum-on.html (prayers are linked here)

Defending Conscience Rights video and recap

The Carolina Family Coalition held a Defending Conscience Rights Against Vaccine Mandates event shortly before Christmas, and they have now released the video for those unable to attend. The event was organized to help support Catholic workers stand up for their conscience rights against vaccine mandates, which violate Church teaching. Readers even may see a few Latin Mass faces among the speakers.  To view the event visit: https://www.prolifecharlotte.org/defending-conscience-rights/

Feast of St. Thomas Beckett – December 29  – Patron of the Church’s Liberty

Speaking of rights and liberties, ach year we journey through the sanctoral cycle and occasionally note a certain saint’s feast day with only a passing thought or reflection on how they achieved their sanctity or its meaning to us today (much to our detriment!).  Perhaps this could be said about St. Thomas Becket, the English archbishop of Canterbury. Beckett, whose feast day occurs during the joyful octave of Christmas certainly deserves closer attention, as the Church just commemorated the 851^st anniversary of his martyrdom which occurred on December 29, 1170.

19^th century Benedictine liturgist, Dom Prosper Gueranger notes about Beckett:

This glorious Martyr did not shed his blood for the faith; he was not dragged before the tribunals of Pagans or Heretics, there to confess the Truths revealed by Christ and taught by the Church. He was slain by Christian hands; it was a Catholic King that condemned him to death; it was by the majority of his own Brethren, and they his countrymen, that he was abandoned and blamed. How, then, could he be a Martyr? How did he gain a Palm like Stephen’s? He was the Martyr for the Liberty of the Church. (Emphasis added.)

Gueranger continues:

To Kings and Rulers and, in general, to all Diplomatists and Politicians, there are few expressions so unwelcome as this of the Liberty of the Church; with them, it means a sort of conspiracy. The world talks of it as being an unfortunate scandal, originating in priestly ambition. Timid temporizing Catholics regret that it can elicit anyone’s zeal, and will endeavor to persuade us that we have no need to fear anything, so long as our Faith is not attacked. Notwithstanding all this, the Church has put upon her altars and associated with St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy Innocents, this our Archbishop, who was slain in his Cathedral of Canterbury, in the 12th century, because he resisted a King’s infringements on the extrinsic Rights of the Church. She sanctions the noble maxim of St. Anselm, one of St. Thomas’ predecessors in the See of Canterbury: Nothing does God love so much in this world, as the Liberty of his Church; and the Apostolic See declares by the mouth of Pius the 8th, in the 19th century, the very same doctrine she would have taught by St. Gregory the 7th, in the 11th century: The Church, the spotless Spouse of Jesus Christ the immaculate Lamb is, by God’s appointment, Free, and subject to no earthly power (Litterae Apostolicae ad Episcopos Provinciae Rhenance, 1830).(Emphasis added.)

https://sensusfidelium.com/the-liturgical-year-dom-prosper-gueranger/december/december-29-st-thomas-archbishop-of-canterbury-and-martyr/ (the entire entry is worth reading)

What Gueranger is emphasizing is how much Our Lord Jesus Christ, through His Church’s liturgical calendar, values the liberty of His Catholic Church in the public realm. In fact, so much is it valued that in the Church’s wisdom, the patron saint of Church liberty is placed near St. Stephen and St. John, just days after the Nativity. That’s a pretty big emphasis – and something to contemplate as the secular world continues to encroach on the Church’s freedoms, especially under the guise of a delusional “pandemic”. May the Catholics abroad who find their churches temporarily closed this Christmas thanks to the unjust COVID-19 protocols call upon this great saint before these churches remain closed permanently.

St. Thomas Beckett, pray for us!