Sorry about not posting regularly. There are always so many things to do and so little time! I’ve been working on several projects: 1.) Restoring a statue for the Carmelite Monastery; 2.) Making yards and yards of lace for an altar cloth (I’ll be sewing the altar cloth, also); 3.) Canning a variety of sauces and salsas, and peppers.
Those are only the few extras apart from daily duty, a prayer life, and dealing with the little surprises God’s Providence strews upon our path. There is always something.
But to get to the point of this posting. I have been asked about our annual TLM which in the past has been celebrated in our locale on the first Saturday of October. Well, we are not having one – not in October, anyway. The Canons of the Institute in Chicago who normally come to celebrate the Mass for us, have been on ‘overload’ while covering for an ill confrere of the St. Louise apostolate. I had enough sense to not even ask those good Fathers.
In the meantime, we have been doing some scouting and probing with regard to the possibility of expanding the reach of the Tridentine Mass into other churches. An acquaintance of ours asked two area priests here in the Joliet diocese, one of them his own pastor (now former pastor 🙂 ), if they would allow the use of their church for celebration of the TLM. You can laugh, or you can cry at their answers. I am used to this kind of reaction. Here is what the first one said – I paraphrase:
Father: “I want to see the diocesan directives under which you work.”
Me: “But Father, there are no diocesan directives. We work under our Holy Father’s motu prop….”
Father: “No, you are in this diocese, and I have to go by that.”
Me, thinking to myself: “He is sending us to obtain something that doesn’t exist. How stupid he thinks we are. And he isn’t offering to make an inquiry about those non-existent directive himself. What a pitiful priest. Best to shake the dust from our feet.”
The second priest who was asked gave a “no” because as he put it, “We have a hard enough time getting people to attend our N.O. as it is.” I myself did not speak to him. Since I was not in his presence when the answer was relayed to me, and thus not fearful of offending his priestly office, I felt free to burst out laughing. And I did! His statement could be taken two ways, but either way, out of his own mouth comes an indictment against the N.O.
The Novus Ordo is dying out, and they know it. (Here is one example for 2010: Only 23% of OC Catholics attend Mass regularly) 
But, by the grace of God, we continue to work towards scheduling a TLM for our Kankakee Latin Mass Community. Hopefully, we will have a positive report soon. We know there is one good priest in this diocese who is not afraid to welcome us into his parish.
