FSSP Ordinations this Friday!

I am sending along some fascinating information regarding this coming Friday, May 30, 2008. In Lincoln, Nebraska, four men from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) will be ordained priests by Darío Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, the President for the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. It will be televised live on EWTN at 11:00am (EST), 8:00am (PST). The ordinations will take place at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ, in the Diocese of Lincoln. It will be re-broadcast at 9:00pm Friday evening (PST). This incredible event will last four hours!

The FSSP is an international society of Catholic priests entrusted with the preservation and administration of the Catholic Church's ancient Latin liturgical traditions. Nearly 200 priests belong to the Fraternity and over 100 seminarians are studying in its two seminaries in Bavaria, Germany and Denton, Nebraska.

The men of the FSSP, founded by the late John Paul II in 1988, ONLY celebrate the Extraordinary form of the Roman Rite (the Old Mass). They also celebrate all the sacraments according to the liturgical books in force in 1962. In other words, they celebrate as your fathers, grandfathers, and almost all the Saints knew from approximately the 5th century until 1969. I have been privileged to have met several of them over the years, and they are incredible!

Even if you’ve only attended the Ordinary form (the New Mass), or have zero interest in tradition, this will be a once in a life time event. It will be unlike any ordination you’ve every seen since the late 1960s. It will be void of banal music, improvisation, joke telling, culturally sensitive readings or strange musical instruments, inclusive language, feminist theology, hand clapping, polyester chasubles, liturgical dancers, communion standing and in the hand, et al. In other words, it will be magnificent and majestic, totally focused on God, not Man.

If you can’t spend the time to watch (who can during a work week?), I would urge you to tape it. And if not for you, for your children and grandchildren.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: The law of prayer is the law of faith, or “How we pray, is how we believe.”