Mission not new Kind of church

York Daily Record

Friday, February 6, 2004

In a front page article on Jan. 26, you wrote that Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Mission is "a new kind of Catholic church for York" ("Church brings back Latin mass, stirs controversy," YDR, Jan. 26). Well, no ‑ not really. Actually, the only church in York that is not a new kind of Catholic church is our little mission.

A short block away, also on South Beaver Street, is another Catholic church ‑ Saint Patrick's. The Jesuit missionaries who founded that parish in 1741 would not recognize the services held there today, but they would feel right at home in the Saints Peter and Paul chapel because their Mass and ours are essentially identical.

For a Diocesan spokesman to claim we are not in union with the Roman Catholic Church is ludicrous. We are being persecuted precisely because of our fidelity to the Church. For more than 20 years we have been pleading with our bishops to allow a traditional Mass somewhere in the Diocese of Harrisburg, as the Pope has been encouraging them to do. Our entreaties have fallen on deaf ears, and the depth of the bitter contempt of the neo-catholic establishment for its own heritage is frightening.

I don't care any more if most people seem to prefer the updated church with its New Mass concocted in the '6os with the help of six Protestants who made sure everything was removed from the Mass that might offend non-Catholics. Let them have it ‑ the whole world can see what has become of the Catholic Church since its promulgation.

With the help of God, we will remain faithful.

CAROLINE PITMAN

HARRISBURG