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Twenty Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

Laudetur Iesus Christus! Sunday is the 24th and last Sunday after Pentecost and according to the St. Andrew Daily Missal, the traditional breviary lessons are from the prophet Micheas who foretells of the destruction of Jerusalem which is symbolic of the world at the end of time (Micheas 1:5-7), which is what is commemorated today. Yet Micheas also gives hope and also foretells of the coming liturgical season of Advent and Christmas with the birth of Christ in Bethlehem (Micheas 5:2). For today’s Latin Mass, we share a reflection on Sunday’s Collect for the Mass which ties all these topics together: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2020/11/the-stirring-collect-for-last-sunday.html#.Y3m2eH3MKHs

Latin Masses This Week (Note Cancellations)

  • Wednesday November 23, 6pm – St. Ann, feast of Pope St. Clement I
  • Thursday November 24 – NO LATIN MASS at St. Thomas Aquinas, Canceled due to Thanksgiving holiday
  • Friday November 25, 12:30pm St. Mark (NO 7AM LATIN MASS at St. Ann), feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria
  • Saturday November 26, – NO 4th SATURDAY 8AM LATIN Mass at St. Ann, canceled due to Thanksgiving holiday weekend

Advent-Christmas Schedule: Please see our webpage for the most recent announced Latin Masses during Advent and Christmas: https://charlottelatinmass.org/mass-times/

CCHD – Morally Problematic 2nd Collection

Today in some parishes, there will be a 2nd collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), which is administered by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and has been found to be given money occasionally to morally problematic organizations that promote abortion or  revolutionary causes. Thankfully St. Ann’s, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Mark parishes, and other parishes are not participating in this collection, but other parishes might. Know before you give. To learn more about the problems you can view at the Carolina Pro-Life Action Network’s website (a Catholic pro-life group here): https://www.prolifecharlotte.org/cchd-2021/

Community News

  • St. Ann Parishioners Receive Minor Orders at FSSP Seminary: Two St. Ann parishioners who are attending the Fraternity of St. Peter’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Nebraska received minor orders yesterday. Mr. David Carter was conferred the minor orders of Exorcist and Acolyte, while Mr. Brendan d’Amato received the minor orders of Porter and Lector. The Traditional Rite has both minor (Tonsure, Porter, Lector, Exorcist, Acolyte, and Subdeacon) and major orders (deacon and priest) as part of a seminarian’s path to the priesthood. The minor orders were abolished in 1972 and are only conferred to those seminarians studying at traditional seminaries (generally not diocesan). Please pray for both men as they continue their studies and discernment. To see a brief write up and prayer cards visit the FSSP seminary: http://www.fsspolgs.org/minor-orders-november-19-2022/

  • Second Fr. Ripperger Talk Added For Friday March 10: Due to the overwhelming interest in hearing exorcist and traditional theologian, Fr. Chad Ripperger, St. Thomas Aquinas parish is now hosting a second, identical talk, by Fr. Ripperger on Friday March 10. Please see the parish’s note:

    Due to the Saturday, March 11, 2023 event filling up so quickly, Fr. Codd asked Fr. Ripperger if he would be willing to come on Friday, March 10, 2023, to do an additional identical conference, in order to allow for more parishioners and folks from the diocese to attend.  Fr. Ripperger graciously agreed, and so we will now have him speak both on Friday and Saturday.  Note, these will be the same talk on both days.  Saturday is already full.  If you are signed up already to attend Saturday, please do not register for Friday as well, or we will delete your registration.  Please register as soon as possible in order to help us with planning.  As well, if you are able to help support us bringing Fr. Ripperger in for an additional talk, please use the registration form to do so, or use this link.  Thank you! https://www.osvhub.com/st-thomas-aquinas-rc-church/forms/frripperger-friday
  • Holy Face Devotions (new updates)
  • St. Mark – Mondays 2-2:45pm
  • St. Thomas Aquinas – Tuesdays 6am in the main church
  • St. Ann – Tuesdays 7:30am in the chapel after the Novus Ordo Mass (uses the booklet/chaplet which takes 15-20 minutes)
  • **St. Michael the Archangel, Gastonia ** – Tuesdays, 6:30-7pm, Holy Family Room (NEW)
  • **Holy Spirit, Denver ** – Tuesdays 10-11am after the Novus Ordo Mass
  • Don’t see your parish? Why not organize one?

Catholic Thanksgiving History

To learn more about the Catholic traditions that influenced the U.S. Thanksgiving, please visit our 2021 post: https://charlottelatinmass.org/2021/11/21/last-sunday-after-pentecost-advent-christmas-schedule/

Latin Mass & Traditional News

  • Floriani Men’s Schola: As Tuesday is the feast of St. Cecilia, patroness of musicians, a reader has shared that there is a wonderful men’s schola operating in the Archdiocese of Phoenix that is helping to revive Gregorian Chant. The group, Floriani, chants at various Latin Masses in the Phoenix area, but also has a chant-school podcast where they offer classes to help people learn Gregorian chant. To learn more visit: https://www.floriani.org
  • Archbishop Viganò Revisits Ratzinger: Recently, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has written an essay examining the role Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) had in influencing the documents of Vatican II. The piece raises some uncomfortable issues about His Holiness’ early writings as a younger priest, which the Archbishop calls “Hegelian” and follows the philosophical framework of “thesis-antithesis-synthesis”. In simplistic layman’s terms, this modernist framework appears to merge two opposing, irreconcilable, views into one blended solution. Viganò notes, that at Vatican II these opposing views were focused on one area in particular:  

“[B]etween the Catholic thesis of the Mystical Body [of Christ] and the progressivist antithesis of the ‘people of God’…

Vatican II […]supposedly ended by accepting the exact synthesis that Ratzinger had theorized in his 1954 dissertation…A bold thesis, on closer inspection, that risks confusing the substantial difference between the Body of Christ truly present in His entirety in the Eucharistic species and the Body of Christ realized mystically by the union of the living members of the Church with her divine Head.

This confusion would have then permitted not a few progressive or completely heretical theologians to wink at Protestants thanks to the imprecise formulation of “Body of Christ.”

What Viganò appears to be asserting is Ratzinger’s synthesis allowed modernists in the Church to minimize belief in the Eucharist with potentially ambiguous language in order to please protestants (or be like them!). Yet the concerns Viganò raises about Fr. Ratzinger’s younger progressive views are not new, and were actually covered extensively in this excellent book view by Maike Hickson of a 2017 Ratzinger biography and posted at Rorate Caeli: New biography describes great influence of Fr. Joseph Ratzinger in Vatican II: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2020/12/rorate-exclusivenew-biography-describes.html

Abp. Viganò: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is wrong to praise the diabolical revolution of Vatican II: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/abp-vigano-pope-emeritus-benedict-xvi-is-wrong-to-praise-the-diabolical-revolution-of-vatican-ii/

CLMC comment: As we know, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI did much good to bring back the Traditional Latin Mass and was doctrinally orthodox when he served as the head of doctrine for Pope St. John Paul II. So how could he also be author of some problematic ideas and actions from the 1950s and at Vatican II? It’s a complex story but one that needs to be discussed more. Why? Because this approach may affect the current and future of the Latin Mass. One of the liturgical renewal “approaches” that came from Pope Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum could be called “Hegelian”. In essence, Pope Benedict XVI seemed to float the idea that the Traditional Latin Mass (thesis?) and Novus Ordo (antithesis?) could mutually enrich one another, giving the impression that eventually the two forms would merge someday into one united Mass (synthesis?). Yet as we’ve learned from Dr. Peter Kwasniewski and others, the two Masses are practically two different rites and appear to be irreconcilable.  The CLMC continues to be grateful for Pope Benedict liberating the Latin Mass and will let more competent minds answer this question and issues. We do however invite readers to read the Rorate Caeli article above as it is illuminating. (Ed. note – we are most willing to be corrected in our meager attempt to summarize this difficult, complex, and yet important topic)

  • The Reverent Novus Ordo in Peril: The above article on Ratzinger might serve as a primer for this interesting and brief podcast about the future of the “reverent” Novus Ordo. In sum, the author posits that the heavy intellectual support for making the Novus Ordo reverent is drying up (John Paul II & Pope Benedict XVI), and as we see in Rome today, there is little interest in continuing this effort, leaving the Latin Mass the more stable and sure option for a reverent liturgy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ayEcZh_Z0 (Click here for transcript)
  • Archbishop Chaput Remarks on the Latin Mass Restrictions: To close this third news article about the post-conciliar liturgical framework, we share a concerning interview with Archbishop Charles Chaput, a conservative bishop who recently retired as Archbishop of Philadelphia. Sadly, His Excellency, in responding to a question about the 2021 motu proprio restricting the Latin Mass, appears to accept some of the decades old modernist scarecrow arguments that Latin Mass attendees do not actively participate in the Mass, and that the Novus Ordo Mass corrects that problem. You can watch the video here (at 8:15): https://youtu.be/PGjuBnqxCRw?t=493 or visit the article: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/abp-chaput-adds-insult-to-injury-for-arlington-catholics-who-love-the-latin-mass/  

CLMC note: We share this, not in any disrespect for His Excellency (who has defended the faith in other matters), but as a reminder that the liturgical viewpoint of even conservatives is quite far from those of traditionalists (those attending the Latin Mass) and much closer to the modernists. For a good counterpoint to His Excellency’s views on active participation we share a recent article by Phil Lawler with some helpful analogies: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/what-active-participation-really-means/

Late November Feast Days

This week as the liturgical year winds down, the traditional calendar has some unique feasts in late November. We share a few along with some helpful background both spiritually and historically.

  • Feast of St. Cecilia: This Tuesday November 22 is the feast of St. Cecilia, the patroness of musicians. Dom Prosper Gueranger had a great reflection on her life and noted she can be an excellent saint to overcome fear. Since many people are anxious or have fear over our country, problems in the Church, etc. – she might be a good saint to have recourse to:

    … Without doubt, this zeal is not extinct; it still works in some, and its fruits rejoice and console the Church; but why does it slumber so profoundly in so many hearts which God had prepared to be its active centres? The cause is unhappily to be traced to that general coldness, produced by effeminacy, which might be taken by itself alone as the type of the age; but we must add thereto another sentiment, proceeding from the same source, which would suffice, if of long duration, to render the debasement of a nation incurable. This sentiment is fear; and it may be said to extend at present to its utmost limit. Men fear the loss of goods or position, fear the loss of comforts and ease, fear the loss of life. Needless to say, nothing can be more enervating, and consequently more dangerous to the world, than this humiliating pre-occupation but above all, we must confess that it is anything but Christian. Have we forgotten that we are merely pilgrims on this earth? And has the hope of future good died out of our hearts? Caecilia will teach us how to rid ourselves of this sentiment of fear. In her days, life was less secure than now. There certainly was then some reason to fear; and yet Christians were so courageous, that the powerful pagans often trembled at the words of their victims. https://fsspatl.com/liturgical-year/438-sanctoral-cycle/november-end-of-the-year/3366-november-22-st-caecelia-virgin-and-martyr
  • Feast of Pope St. Clement I: Wednesday November 23, is the feast of St. Clement, the 4th Pope. Dom Gueranger has a fascinating story that confirms Papal Primacy. A controversy broke out in the early Church of Corinth during Clement’s reign when St. John was still alive and nearby in Ephesus, yet the Corinth Church wrote to Pope Clement in Rome for his assistance, demonstrating papal authority:  

    The Corinthians at last felt the necessity of putting an end to a disorder, which might be prejudicial to the extension of the Christian faith; and for this purpose, it was requisite to seek assistance from outside. The Apostles had all departed this life, except St. John, who was still the light of the Church. It was no great distance from Corinth to Ephesus, where the Apostle resided; yet it was not to Ephesus but to Rome that the Church of Corinth turned. Clement examined the case referred to his judgment by that Church, and sent to Corinth five commissaries to represent the Apostolic See.. https://fsspatl.com/liturgical-year/438-sanctoral-cycle/november-end-of-the-year/3367-november-23-st-clement-i-pope-and-martyr
  • Feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria:  Friday November 25 is the feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria who was taken off the calendar in 1969 when the Novus Ordo Mass was introduced but later restored by Pope St. John Paul II in 2002 (it always remained on the Traditional Calendar). She is one of the 14 Holy Helpers, and as this article notes, perhaps a good recourse against Protestant heretics: http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2020/11/st-catherine-of-alexandria-in-counter.html (As a reminder the TLM calendar has several saints who were unjustly removed in 1969 including St. Christopher, St. Philomena – the Novus Ordo’s loss remains our gain!)


  • The Miraculous Medal: Saturday November 27 is the optional feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. To learn more about this feast day visit Fisheaters.com: https://www.fisheaterscom/miraculousmedal.html

Sunday Commemorates the end of the world. What Mass will you be attending Sunday, and at the end of time?