Stories: Early Days of Tradition Part 7 - The Road Home To Tradition

 +

JMJ

To say the least, my own family's discovery of Tradition was tumultuous. For some reason one of my older brothers was started on a path to search into what came before 1965. 

This led him to intense conversations with our parish priest.  Ok, they were arguments and resulted in a veiled reference to him in a sermon. Our parish priest was a canon lawyer, had studied in Rome.

Sprinkled throughout the Church were 'relics' of the Tridentine Mass. In the Sacristy you'd see the six altar candles.  The original tabernacle was on a side altar (of which he'd kept two). Statues were everywhere, not completely out of sight, but out of mind. He kept the thurible. No girl altar servers were present in the sanctuary, nor were their lay Eucharistic ministers. 

The sermons were Catholic. When I was there for a funeral, Father preached on the Rosary.  It made a deep impression on me and I still remember it as the best sermon on the Rosary that I had ever heard.

Looking back, that Church and priest were an oasis in the storm of change battering at the Church. The large Church was full ... i would guess at least a thousand.

That all came to halt when his parish had grown so large that the bishop founded a new parish carved out of the old one. My family was a 'founding' member of the parish and very active. Yes, I was an altar boy and ended up being the pillar of the altar servers. The Bishop one time suggested that one day he could ordain me.  

That never happened. 

It was in this new church with a new, less conservative priest, that my brother started asking questions of our old priest.  I remember hearing that our new priest had been quite strict, but that wasn't the case. The words were they he'd going to Rome twice and been 'broken'. I suspect that it wasn't that bad, but that was what I heard as a teenager.

My brother's actions got my parents moving. I remember my Dad reading about Luther in the Encyclopedia Britannica. My mom was there when he finished, looked up at her and said "We've been tricked."

That led to a meeting between my parents and our parish priest. In the end, my parents asked a question:

If the Church is on fire, what do you save?

The priest answered:

The altar

My Mom replied that that was the wrong answer.  At that point, there wasn't a weekly Tridentine Mass in our city, so we bounced between our old parish, the Ukrainian Rite and the little chapel.

That was how I ended up one summer day in a small dusty chapel.  

Three memorable things happened:

1. Everyone answered the rosary in their mother tongue.
2. I met my future wife.
3. I passed out and vomited on the carpet as I was helped out.

I didn't even see Mass that Sunday.

Later I came to realise that the Tridentine Mass and prayers were all present in my "Little Key To Heaven", that I'd received as a gift. No wonder my previous pastor hadn't been to enthusiastic about it.

I also realised that joining Tradition in the early 80's made us one of the veterans.

P^2