St. Gregory Society Ends 38 years of Tradition in New Haven with Final Mass
This quotation struck me immediately on December 31. On New Year’s Eve, just two minutes before Mass was to begin for the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas, the parish priest of St Stanislaus Church in New Haven, Connecticut announced that the Traditional Mass that had been celebrated since 1986, and weekly since 1990, was to be ended. The final date for celebrations was set for this weekend, January 14, 2024.
For 38 years, the St Gregory Society of New Haven had sponsored the Masses, first at Sacred Heart Church, which was closed in 2009, and then at St Stanislaus. The reason the words above struck me was that while the work of the St Gregory Society was known throughout the northeastern United States, and, indeed, throughout the world through recordings and blog posts, the Archdiocese of Hartford forgot who we were, never acknowledged several attempts to invite its dignitaries to celebrations, and decided to consign our people to St. Patrick’s Church or some other place where the Traditional Mass was central.
While I might be seen as biased in my analysis, it is without a doubt a true statement that much of the growth of the Traditional Mass in New England, the Mid-Atlantic States and elsewhere began with SGS.
Founded in 1984 by Nicholas Renouf and Britt Wheeler (both choir directors) to petition for the Mass under St John Paul II’s Quattuor Abhinc Annos indult, the St Gregory Society had its first Mass at Sacred Heart Church in New Haven, a Missa Cantata for the feast of the Holy Family. At that time, Archbishop John F. Whealon allowed three Masses in the archdiocese, one in Hartford’s Our Lady of Sorrows Church, then the LaSallette Mother Church (turned over to the archdiocese only three weeks ago) in New Haven, and Waterbury, each on the first, second and third Sundays of the month.
Preparing for our Mass, which was the second to begin after Our Lady of Sorrows, servers were trained, a choir was assembled, using professional singers from the many churches in New Haven. Source
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