Pope: seminaries must teach Latin Mass

I am indebted to a friend who sent me an email with a link to this article in the Telegraph. In the "Holy Smoke" column by Damian Thompson of December 14th, he reports the following:

Bad news for England’s ludicrously overstaffed Catholic seminaries, one of which employs 37 staff for 32 students. The Pope wants them to teach trainee priests how to say the traditional Latin Mass. They won’t like that...

England’s seminaries are all pretty much in the same mould: Left-leaning, liturgically trendy, politically correct, therapy-obsessed and terrified of a younger generation of conservative Catholics. Most of them would rather teach Unitarian circle-dancing than the Tridentine Mass. But they may not have much choice.

The pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei, unimpressed by certain bishops’ sour response to the liberation of the Latin Mass, realises that there is a shortage of priests who know how to celebrate the complicated ancient liturgy. Since demand for it is rising, seminaries will need to address this problem.

In America, some bishops have anticipated this situation. Two seminaries in Pennsylvania – St Vincent, Latrobe, and St Charles Borromeo, Philadelphia – have just announced that they will be teaching the “extraordinary form”, as it is now known....

Read more here.