The following comment on a post at Fr. Z’s WDTPRS alerted me to this video I post. I post it at minute 23 or so, but prior to that is an Ancient Order Latin Mass celebrated outdoors of this church in France in 1987! The active participation of the laity is stunning but after you read this comment watch what happens. Stunning:
Another story about the traditional movement in France: Palm Sunday at the parish church in Port Marly, 1987. The bishop went as far as to brick up the church because the people insisted on keeping the Mass of tradition. How does this differ from psychopathy? If every Mass that you hear with devotion adds to your consolation at the hour of death, what consolation can you expect at that hour for having bricked up a church to keep out the Mass for which it was built?
So on Palm Sunday, the people and their priest held Mass on the steps outside, then got to work with crowbars and a battering ram and took out the brick wall, singing Christus Vincit.
There’s a video of this on YouTube. The battering ram part starts about 22 minutes in, and at the end is an interview of the priest (in French). My French is very negligible, but I gather that the priest points out that these parishioners were being kept out of a church that was built by their ancestors, and the bishop is being a legalist and not a father!
