Biretta Tip to Roman

To use Fr Z's term the biretta tip this weekend needs to go to Roman who served at the thanksgiving Mass at St Patricks Cathedral in Melbourne yesterday. It was reported on Fr Z's blog so its good to see that some of our team's activities are making international news.

I am also excited that the Extraordinary form Mass is going to be part of the weekly timetable at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney. The Mass will be celebrated in the Lady Chapel of the cathedral pictured here on Wednesdays at 4pm and on First Fridays. This pic was taken some years ago and the Altar has been cleaned since then. The table that you see in front has been replaced with a really bad looking smaller table and with a matching ambo. Hopefully they can be easily shifted each Wednesday.

The problem at St Stephens Cathedral in Brisbane is that the renovations in the 1980s have made it unrealistic to celebrate the Extraordinary form in this church and the adjoining chapel. The Altar in the chapel is too small, but the Altar in the main building a minimum size for celebration. The local clergy would probably be hostile to the idea of any celebration of the Extraordinary form.

Nearby churches such as St Patricks Church in Fortitude Valley (about 1.5km North of the city but still very accessible) would need renovation to reveal the High Altar in its glory. Thankfully the renovations of the 1970s were so cheaply and badly done, that it would only take a day to remove and dump them into an industrial skip. The urban renewal already in the area and proposed makes this a strategically important church in the future. I will take some photos in the near future so you can see what I mean.

Other churches in the inner city are St Brigids at Red Hill (a most imposing church) and Our Lady of Victories at Bowen Hills. They are both eminently suitable for celebration of the Extrordinary Form, but do suffer from lack of accessibility.