The Australian Catholic Bishop’s Conference announced in a Media Release on Monday that
Pope Benedict XVI’s celebration of Midnight Mass will once again be beamed into homes, hospitals and nursing homes across Australia via an ABC telecast this Christmas Day.
The Mass, from St Peter’s Basilica, will air at 11am (eastern summer time) on ABC Television.
The Holy Father will preside at the Mass which will, as usual, feature the participation of children from around the world.
The ABC’s telecast will feature English-language commentary.
Hurrah! (Note to self: Go to early Mass on Christmas day or set the DVD-recorder!)
As Gonzo would have said, “AND chickens”! ;-)
Hopefully the liturgy will be much improved now the old Marini is gone and Il Papa can pick out his own vestments…
Looking forward to another excellent homily.
As Pr Weedon has been saying, Put the Mass back in Christmas!
Actually, Papa Benny’s Christmas masses have been quite good (I’ve watched them on EWTN)–it was only the choirs that could have done with a bit of work.
Naturally, the homily is the high point.
Christmas Eve will be very special for me this year. My Lutheran sister’s first son married a Catholic girl so we are all going to Mass at daughter-in-law’s parish Christmas Eve, then hopefully husband and I can stay up long enought to watch the Midnight Mass from Rome and then there will be Mass on Christmas morning at our parish.
How I love this beautiful season in the Church Year.
Pay special attention to the arrangement of the Papal Altar and the vestments.
If past weeks are to judge by you will see:
– “the Big 6”: 6 substantial candlesticks arranged in Traditional Format ON the Altar
– an Altar Cross, in the middle of the Altar
– vestments befitting the occasion.
Oh, and in doing so, the Holy Father will be saying to the priests of the world [which INCLUDES AUSTRALIA] “FOLLOW MY EXAMPLE” for the edification of your faitful.
He’s facing East by the way…
Ah Midnight Mass from the Vatican!
What memories indeed of Christmas in my 20s and 30s and early 40s, visiting the folks for Christmas, as a gesture of family peace attending “Midnight Mass” at the parish where I grew up — where, like all bogus ordo Masses, it wasn’t Mass at all, but as if to rub it in specially for Christmas, wasn’t at midnight either but at 1030pm, “pastoral reasons” of course, but in the denial characteristic of post-conciliar “Catholicism” still called Midnight Mass.
And after this pathetic shell of the First Mass of Christmas as I had served and known it, home to Midnight Mass from the Vatican on NBC, for the even more pathetic shell of the bogus ordo with Christmas wrappings of trappings from what was before, which would have been welcome except for the realisation that I only knew them from before and they were utterly out of the ordinary Catholic experience of anyone younger than myself, once the common property of all before the Revolution.
Then cap it off with the tail end of the radio broadcast of Midnight Mass from the Abbey, to hear Stille Nacht sung at Communion, a bittersweet end to a painful night, but nonetheless a reminder of stollen and sausage to come in the morning.
How nice these last eleven years not to start the feast of the Nativity of Christ with the starkest of all reminders that this is by no stretch of even the most fevered imagination anything even close to the Roman Catholic faith or church, but the grossest of parodies.
Forgive me for asking, but “Past Elder”, are you currently a follower of the SSPX, or have you become a member of some other denomination?
No offence intended, but I find it hard to work out from your comments where your actual position lies.
Joshua, isn’t this blog delightful? Here we have “Past Elder”, a former Roman Catholic and now a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and me, a former Lutheran (German-born in the land of Luther, raised by a Prussian Lutheran mother) now a member of the Roman Catholic Church (argh, actually, I agree with David — Roman Catholic ain’t accurate — I am a member of the Catholic Church of the Roman Rite)!!
where, like all bogus ordo Masses, it wasn’t Mass at all, but as if to rub it in specially for Christmas, wasn’t at midnight either but at 1030pm, “pastoral reasons” of course, but in the denial characteristic of post-conciliar “Catholicism” still called Midnight Mass.
Hmmm. I just checked the liturgical schedule for the 4 closest parishes in my neck of the woods and they are having Midnight Mass at — gasp!! — MIDNIGHT!!
Past Elder’s time warp rides again!
Hi Joshua! I take no offence at all that you do not find my actual position in my comment. It isn’t there. I do not come here to advocate for my actual position, I come here to advocate for my former position, Roman Catholicism, which is an entirely different thing than what travels under the name now.
And there is nothing to be forgiven in your questions; I’m happy to address them. I am not now nor have I ever been associated with SSPX. I am a member of a parish of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. I came to that last year after professing confessional Lutheranism in the Wisconsin Synod, and having served as an elder there, hence my posting name.
I did not convert from Catholicism to Lutheranism. There was 23 years between leaving the former and converting to the latter, for most of which Lutheranism struck me as a well-intended but misguided effort to be Catholic without being Catholic. I left the Roman Catholic Church because it became impossible to deny any longer that what it preached since Vatican II was no longer the Catholic Faith; I left the Roman Catholic faith because if it were the true faith this could not have happened, and, despite many efforts to convince myself otherwise over those 23 years, each time I came away clearer than before that it had.
I would not know of this blog except that its author from time to time visits one of the Lutheran blogs I visit regularly. Some months back, I made a point on that blog to clarify a matter of Catholic theology. When I do that, I always add a caveat that this may no longer be the position of the RCC, since nearly everything they taught me has been stood on its head. Our host appeared and verified what I said as valid, and in turn I checked out his blog, and it turned out he had been a Lutheran pastor who converted to the post-conciliar church. While I can understand the desire of a Lutheran for there to be something like the RCC holds itself to be, it is a flight into the absurd to think the RCC now is that church, or even to think it is any longer the RCC. At least Lutherans who convert to Orthodoxy get Orthodoxy, but to get the pious fraud that is the RCC is really tragic. Ironically, these conversions themselves reinforce my point: they would not have happened to the RCC that once existed, and these converts do not sound anything like converts did, which fits since what they have found is neither the RCC nor Roman Catholicism.
Christine, for God’s sake — the “all” you quote modifies “bogus ordo Masses” and is not distributive; it is neither stated nor implied that all Midnight Masses now begin at 1030pm. Say the First Mass of Christmas at midnight or any time you wish, it will remain what any Mass of the novus ordo is — a rejection of the Catholic Mass, to assist at which is for a person who believes the Catholic faith a venial sin.
Now: my “actual” position, what I believe now. I will step out of my usual role and say it — what a person occupying an office bearing the marks of Anti-Christ does for the Nativity of Jesus is beyond irrelevant to the faith of Christ or his Church, which is the best possible construction to put on it.
Which puts me quite at odds with the SSPX!