Re: quick Masses

By Domenico Bettinelli, Jr. ( articles - email ) | Apr 14, 2003

I don't have a problem with short Masses, per se, Fr. Wilson, as long as they are reverent. The Carmelite chapel at the mall in nearby Peabody, Mass., has short Masses that don't seem at all irreverent. And it's been years since I've been to St. Anthony's in Boston.

It's just that the guy in the article seems to extol quickness as a virtue. Masses don't always have to be long, but to say that the best part about a Mass is that it's short enough to fit in with everything else he has to do in that hour makes me wonder if he's got his priorities straight.

Maybe I'm just reading my own distaste for sloppy, irreverent Masses into this case. I do remember a priest once bragging that he could "do" a Mass in 12 minutes. If you came at 1 minute after the top of the hour, you were missing the first reading.