The St. Monica Society was launched by Una Voce Canada in August 2019. Each week, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is offered for the conversion or return to the Catholic faith of all those enrolled in the Society.
Una Voce Canada members in good standing may enroll individuals or groups of individuals by sending either:
A letter addressed to Una Voce Canada (Attn. St. Monica Society), PO Box 30027, North Vancouver, BC V7H 2Y8
Please provide the following:
Your name
Your membership renewal date (found on your newsletter mailing envelope)
Names of individuals or groups of individuals to be enrolled (for example, “John Smith” or “The family of John Smith, Vancouver, BC”)
There is no limit to the number of individuals or groups you may enroll. No stipend is required. Donations will be gratefully accepted and used to provide stipends to the priests offering Masses for the Society.
We reproduce below a statement issued by the International Una Voce Federation (FIUV) on February 9, 2021.
Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce Statement on the Report of the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) on the Implementation of Summorum Pontificum
The FIUV has become aware of a document, in the public domain, containing a summary of the responses made by French bishops to the questionnaire sent to them by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, on the subject of the implementation of the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum. Although this document does not appear to have been intended for publication, its authenticity has not been denied, and a reaction to it seems necessary.
We note first that the document adopts a consistently hostile tone towards the ancient Latin liturgical tradition, to the priests who celebrate it, and to the faithful who attend it. This has understandably caused considerable hurt among French Catholics attached to this tradition. The document does not speak, on behalf of the bishops of France, about these sons and daughters of the Church with the words of a shepherd and father. In the words of Una Voce France, we do not find
… the slightest trace of empathy, cordiality, or ‘heart’ in them as they say in one place. Instead, we find contempt, at best indifference, towards those narrow-minded beings, without theology, without charity, that are the faithful to the ancient Latin Mass. A Mass that so many generations followed, and from which they nourished their faith … which is ours today.[1]
Nevertheless, the impression of hostility made by this document masks many positive features of the reception of Summorum Pontificum in France. The document acknowledges these phenomena with a singular lack of grace, or without noting even that they are good things. It refers, for example, to ‘large families’ requesting the EF; to ‘weak’ young people seeking out celebrations and finding in them a supportive spiritual environment; of seminarians learning to celebrate the EF in their own time, without the assistance of their formators; and to this younger, more traditionally-inclined generation of priests, celebrating the Ordinary Form with greater reverence and fidelity.
Vídimus stellam ejus in Oríente, et vénimus cum munéribus adoráre Dóminum.
“We have seen a star in the East, and are come with gifts to adore the Lord.” (Matthew 2:2; from the Mass of the Epiphany, January 6th)
So quotes Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene in Divine Intimacy, his guide to Carmelite spirituality. He continues:
[The Magi] saw the star and immediately set out. They had no doubts: their unbounded faith was strong and sure. They did not hesitate at the prospect of the trials of a long journey: they had generous hearts. They did not postpone the journey: their souls were ready.
A star often appears in the heaven of our souls; it is an inspiration from God, clear and intimate, urging us to greater generosity and calling us to a life of closer union with Him. Like the Magi, we too must always follow our star with faith, promptness and selfless generosity. If we allow it to guide us, it will certainly lead us to God; it will bring us to the One whom we are seeking.
The Magi did not give up their quest, although the star – at one point – disappeared from their sight. We should follow their example and their perseverance, even when we are in interior darkness. This is a trial of faith which is overcome only by the exercise of pure, naked faith. I know that He wills it, I know that God is calling, and this suffices for me: Scio cui credidi et certus sum; I know whom I have believed, and I am certain. (2 Tim 1:12) No matter what happens, I shall trust Him.
In this spirit, let us accompany the Magi to adore the new-born King. “And as they brought forth from among their treasures mystical gifts, let us from our hearts bring forth something fit to offer Him” (Roman Breviary).
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It has been about thirteen months since Catherine and I made the decision to follow our star, namely, to make “composing music for the greater glory of God and the strengthening of souls” the focus of my musical life. However, as for many of you, this year has been a cloudy one, often concealing our star. Nonetheless, we follow the Magi’s example and persevere, “even when we are in interior darkness.”
Many of you persevered with us, providing spiritual and financial support. With that support, and the tireless dedication of filmmaker Nathan Douglas, we are now able to present the short documentary CANTUS FIRMUS – The Music of Mark Emerson Donnelly.
If you find CANTUS FIRMUS inspiring, and wish to support us as we continue our journey of creating new music which rests firmly on the foundation of Catholic tradition, we would be most grateful. Please consider making a donation:
Una Voce Canada (select “MED Composer” from the dropdown menu; Revenue Canada tax receipt available)
Send a cheque (payable to Una Voce Canada; Memo: MED Composer) to Una Voce Canada, P.O. Box 30027, North Vancouver, BC V7H 2Y8 (Revenue Canada tax receipt available)
On the afternoon of Thursday, November 19th, 2020, I was preparing for Offertorium’s evening rehearsal. Nothing extraordinary about this, except that I got a text at about 5 pm from one of the singers asking if anything had changed about rehearsal due to the announcement by British Columbia’s chief health officer about 30 minutes earlier. What was her announcement? All in-person public worship was cancelled, effective the next morning!
We were preparing for the Mass of the Last Sunday after Pentecost. In the Gospel for that day, Our Lord tells His disciples to watch for the “abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet” (Matthew 24:15).
What was this“abomination of desolation”? It was the order by King Antiochus IV in the second century BC, outlawing the Jewish temple sacrifice of the lamb to the one true God, and, likely, instituting in its place a sacrifice to pagan idols. But in this passage from the Gospel according to Matthew, Our Lord was telling His disciples to watch in their own time (the first century AD) for the abomination of desolation. This is most often interpreted as a reference to the destruction of the temple and all of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Roman general (later emperor) Titus. Was this a different abomination or the same?
Fast forward to today. The public attendance of THE sacrifice of the Lamb (at Holy Mass) is being outlawed in my home province. Is there a new Antiochus, a new Titus? I’ll leave that for you to ponder. However, as Matthew’s narrative continues, Jesus says: “He that readeth, let him understand” (Matthew 24:15).
St. Paul, in the first century, wrote: “Let us consider one another, to provoke unto charity and to good works: Not forsaking our assembly, as some are accustomed; but comforting one another, and so much the more as you see the [latter] day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25). This was at a time of extreme persecution of Christians. (Remember the Church was not given official sanction by the state until Constantine in the fourth century.) Yet, St. Paul encourages them to meet. Hmm …
Three weeks ago, it was warm and sunny at our home in White Rock, British Columbia, unusual for December. We were having some exterior home repairs done, and Mike the roofer was thankful for a pleasant day. Many of our neighbours were out for walks, with hardly a mask to be seen among them: young, old, mothers pushing baby strollers. Everything seemed normal. Not a new normal, just normal; the only normal there is.
It made me think of old war movies. Though the films were in black and white, the characters in them lived in colour! Whether or not you think the COVID-19 protocols are useful or necessary, most people (except the officials who flaunt their privilege) find them to be an arduous burden. But WE still LIVE in COLOUR. So even as we see that “upon the earth [there shall be] distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and the waves: men withering away for fear and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world” (Luke 21:25-26), there is beauty all around us. As the title of the TV series and book by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen proclaimed, “Life is worth living!”
This takes me back to the Last Sunday after Pentecost and the abomination of desolation. This is pretty heavy stuff. If this abomination is an ongoing thing – the time of the prophet Daniel, of Our Lord, and even now – we can’t simply wither away in fear, expecting the end of the world! We must meditate on it, yes, so we are ready for the second coming of Christ, but we also have to consider (and give thanks for) the gifts that God has bestowed upon us.
Darkness and Light
If I may call upon my insight as a composer, I think, perhaps, that is the inspiration which moved William Byrd (1543-1623) to write his double motet “Ne irascaris, Domine” and “Civitas Sancti tui.” The text, from Isaias 64:9-10, reads:
Be not very angry, O Lord, and remember no longer our iniquity: behold, see we are all thy people. The city of thy sanctuary is become a desert, Sion is made a desert, Jerusalem is desolate.
Pretty dark, eh? It is probably a text upon which Byrd meditated frequently; he was composing at a time when it was illegal to be a Catholic in England. In fact, it is believed that Byrd saw such biblical texts as particularly applicable to the persecution of Catholics in his day. His collection of motets, Cantiones Sacrae, of which “Ne irascaris, Domine” and “Civitas Sancti tui” are a part, were very likely written as an ode to the suffering of his English Catholic community. Byrd himself was fined and jailed for attending Mass. Friends and colleagues were executed in the Tower of London.
Since the Last Sunday after Pentecost, the public celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has been prohibited in the province of British Columbia by the provincial health authorities, and many parishes have been livestreaming their Masses.
Holy Rosary Cathedral
On Christmas Eve, December 24, a Sung Mass will be offered at 9 p.m. PST by Fr. Pablo Santa Maria at Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown Vancouver. The Mass will be livestreamed and can be viewed below.
Holy Family Parish
Holy Family Parish, the Traditional Latin Mass parish in the Archdiocese of Vancouver, will have two livestreams for Christmas:
Midnight Mass (livestream starts at 11:55 p.m. PST on December 24)
Day Mass at 10:30 a.m. PST on December 25
The Mass for the Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity will also be livestreamed, at 4:30 p.m. PST on December 27.
In April of this year, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) sent a letter to all the world’s Latin Rite bishops asking them about the implementation of Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum. Issued on July 7, 2007, Summorum Pontificum restored the Traditional Latin Mass (described by Pope Benedict as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite) to a place at the heart of the Catholic Church’s liturgical life. It gave priests the right to celebrate, without the need to obtain special permission, this older form of the Roman Rite, codified by Pope St. Pius V in 1570 and last revised by Pope St. John XXIII in 1962. It also asked pastors and bishops to provide for the celebration of this Mass wherever a group of lay faithful desired it. And it envisioned the co-existence of both the Extraordinary Form and the newer Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite in the same parishes, as well as the establishment of personal parishes dedicated to the Extraordinary Form.
The CDF letter of April 2020 asked the bishops to submit their answers to nine questions by July 31. To supplement the bishops’ responses, the International Federation Una Voce (FIUV) also presented the CDF with a report about the world-wide implementation of Summorum Pontificum. With detailed information from 368 dioceses in 56 countries in six continents, the FIUV Report complements the CDF survey in terms of both content and perspective, especially the perspective of the laity.
An analysis of the CDF survey questions and an account of how the FIUV Report was conceptualized and assembled is found in Edition 10 (Winter 2020) of the FIUV newsletter Gregorius Magnus. This edition also features “select comments from those filling in the FIUV’s world-wide survey … Each paragraph … comes from a different diocese; they have been selected to illustrate both common themes and the variations found even within a single country.” Six conclusions and three recommendations found in the Report to the CDF are reproduced in this special FIUV World Survey section of Gregorius Magnus.
“God’s voice is not heard in big musical productions […] but in the gentle breeze of Gregorian chant.” – Msgr. Donald Neumann (1948-2003)
On October 16, 2020, Una Voce Canada composer-in-residence Mark Emerson Donnelly gave a virtual workshop to around 45 participants from three of the five choirs at St. Francis Xavier Parish (Chinese Catholic Centre) in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Titled “Gregorian Chant: Strength of Song, Peace of Soul,” the workshop covered the early Church’s view on music in the liturgy; the origin of musical notation; how musical notation led to harmony and polyphony; the restoration of Gregorian chant in the second half of the 19th century; and the importance to the Church of creating new music with the foundation of Gregorian chant and the masters of Renaissance polyphony, especially Palestrina. Mark also demonstrated how to perform Gregorian chant and discussed his Organum Novi Mundi, a compositional technique for singing chant in harmony that he pioneered in 1989, as well as his work as a composer of sacred music.
Below are two video clips from the workshop. Many thanks to Frances Wai-ling So, Jeremy Wong, and Chris Chan of St. Francis Xavier for organizing the workshop and providing an opportunity for members of the parish’s sacred music ministry to learn more about one of the greatest treasures of the Catholic Church.
***
To learn more about the compositions of Mark Emerson Donnelly and how you can sign up for his newsletter and support his work, visit his website at markemersondonnelly.com
To support Mark’s compositional work through Una Voce Canada, please click here and choose “MED Composer” from the dropdown menu. Canadian donors will be provided with tax receipts.
The St. Monica Society was established by Una Voce Canada in August 2019. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered each week for the conversion or return to the Catholic faith of all those enrolled in the Society.
Una Voce Canada members in good standing may enroll individuals or groups of individuals by sending either:
A letter addressed to Una Voce Canada (Attn. St. Monica Society), PO Box 30027, North Vancouver, BC V7H 2Y8
Please provide the following:
Your name
Your membership renewal date (found on your newsletter mailing envelope)
Names of individuals or groups of individuals to be enrolled (for example, “John Smith” or “The family of John Smith, Vancouver, BC”)
There is no limit to the number of individuals or groups you may enroll. No stipend is required. Donations will be gratefully accepted and used to provide stipends to the priests offering Masses for the Society.
The Traditional Mass is celebrated at Holy Rosary Cathedral, 646 Richards Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, every Friday at 6:30 p.m. (Sung Mass on First Fridays) and on certain feast days (to be announced). For more information, please visit the cathedral website at https://www.holyrosarycathedral.org/.
On July 2, 2020, nine priests were ordained for the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest by His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke at the Institute’s Sts. Michele e Gaetano Church in Florence, Italy. The nine new priests come from France, Spain, Malaysia, Canada, and the United States. Among them was Canon Stephen Michael Sharpe of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, whom Una Voce Canada was pleased to have been able to assist with his studies for the priesthood through the generosity of its members and benefactors. Canon Sharpe’s first assignment is at the Basilica of Saints Celso and Giuliano in Rome.
https://institute-christ-king.org/980-nine-new-priests-for-holy-mother-churchCanon Sharpe’s First Mass https://twitter.com/ICKSP/status/1279783023869857793/photo/3
Highlights of the Institute’s ordination week, July 2020. Priestly ordinations start at approximately 4:30.
Posted inUncategorized|Tagged2020, ICKSP, Video|Comments Off on Canon Stephen Michael Sharpe of Saskatoon ordained for the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest on July 2, 2020
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