St. William of York Latin Mass

I sent Bill links to posts about the Latin Rite controversy at Our Lady of the Rosary in Blackfen, England, asking if he knew about it. The links were rebuttals by two priests, Fr. Tim at Blackfen... HERE... and Fr. Z in the US... HERE.

Below is Bill's response, and a picture of the first Latin Mass at his Church St. William of York. (The web's amazing that these pictures exist.)



Dear Stan,

Many thanks for the link to this story. I am not familiar with Blackfen being as it is on the far side of London. But Fr Tim is locally famous in England. The Latin Mass is exactly what we have at St William of York every Sunday.
The St William Sunday timetable goes:

900am Start of English Missa Normativa.
1000am: Mass finishes, coffee starts in annex.
1015am: We, the choir, finally get started on rehearsal for next week
1030am: Choir practice finishes as the Tridentine Rite congregation start to arrive, a wooden platform is laid over the Vatican 2 -style sanctuary and the huge folding partition to the right of the altar is rolled out to seal off the annex area, which is normally an extension of the main nave. Perhaps they feel that the annex area with its serving hatch from the kitchen is too secular....
1100am: Latin Mass starts.

Between the 900am English Mass with organ hymns, the 1100am Latin rite and the 600pm University Chaplaincy Mass with guitar/keyboard/etc, it is like 3 churches in one building; a new metaphor for the Holy Trinity?? And of course we have the occasional Hungarian and Sri Lankan Masses at St William for those minorities.

So far the Latin Mass Society have not caused any noticeable acrimony in our parish, because they are so largely separate from the most of the St William parishioners, though a few St William parishioners do go to the Latin Mass. The Latin Mass parishioners converge from miles around; as far as I know, it is the only regular Latin Mass venue between west London and Oxford, which is quite a gap. The Latin Mass priests are entirely separate from Fr Dominic, who serves St William and also St James in the town centre; this is obviously not the case at Fr Tim's parish. (St James parishioners have even less reason to notice the Latin Mass presence in the little church up in the University area). And the Latin Mass people do help considerably e.g. by taking turns to clean the church. But I can see the potential for friction elsewhere, especially among those people who will sing the praises of every kind of diversity - except that which they don't like.