This Friday at 6:30 p.m., the TLM and California Mission Music Return to Mission Santa Clara, in Honor of the Holy Man of Santa Clara

One sad fact for lovers of traditional Catholic liturgy everywhere is that almost exactly fifty years ago—after the first Sunday of Advent of 1969 when the new Mass was mandated—the traditional Latin Mass was effectively banned, with few exceptions.

Although Pope John Paul II granted two indults in the 1980s to allow the TLM to be celebrated with permission from local bishops, I know—from talking to TLM-loving priests and laity who were around at the time—permission was rarely granted.  Pope Benedict XVI greatly loosened restrictions in 2007 and allowed the TLM to be celebrated more widely under the name “extraordinary form,” but another sad fact is that extraordinary form Masses are even now rarely celebrated at most Catholic colleges and universities.

The disdain for the past is widespread. A few years ago outside the Mission Santa Clara, I ran into a new Santa Clara University graduate who came back for a summer program on the campus, and I was saddened to learn that he had never been taught about the role of Latin as the official language of Catholic Church and had never attended a Latin Mass or heard Gregorian Chant. That smart young man was in total ignorance about these aspects of the Church's heritage after 12 years of parochial school and four years at a Catholic university!

A third sad fact also related to the main topic of this article is that the traditional liturgical music of the Roman Catholic Church has been replaced in most Masses on- and off-campus with often-banal and sometimes even heretical hymns. Who could then imagine a day would come when an extraordinary form High Mass would be chanted again on the Santa Clara University campus? Or that  actual polyphonic Mass settings written by missionaries for converted natives during the Mission days would be sung at Mission Santa Clara again?

 On November 21, 2018, as the result of a lot of prayer and persistence by a group of lay Catholics and the help of priests from the Institute of Christ the King, the day did finally come when a high Mass was celebrated at the restored and enlarged Mission Santa Clara, which now serves as the Santa Clara University chapel. Two local choirs came together to sing the Propers for the day in Gregorian Chant and the Ordinary in a polyphonic Mass setting titled the “California Mission Mass."

 The “California Mission Mass” was arranged by California composer John Biggs from music written down by the missionaries for the converted Native Americans to sing and play, which Biggs curated and arranged from various Mass settings archived by the Franciscans at Mission Santa Barbara. This year, on Friday, November 22, 2019, at 6:30 p.m., that day will come again—with even more solemnity, when the traditional Latin Mass and the California Mission Mass music returns once again to Mission Santa Clara.

 This year a Solemn High Mass will be celebrated by Canon Raphael Ueda, rector of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory in San José, with the help of Canon Jean-Marie Moreau, at the Mission Church’s main altar, which is used only for wedding Masses.

Elevation of the consecrated host at the main altar last year

Canon Moreau who has returned for a one-week visit to the area after eight years at other apostolates of the Institute of Christ the King, will preach the homily from the otherwise mostly-unused high pulpit. Canon Moreau will bring a lot of memories to the event, since he was the first priest to assist the lay people who started the process—eleven years ago—that eventually helped bring the traditional Latin Mass back to SCU, if only once a year.

Homily given from the reconstructed
Mission pulpit last year

After the Mass for the Feast of St. Cecilia, the two priests will lead a prayer for the canonization of "The Holy Man of Santa Clara," Father Magin Catalá, who died on November 22, 1830; this year marks his 189th death anniversary.  Father Catalá first came to Mission Santa Clara in 1796, nineteen years after the mission was first founded by Saint Junipero Serra in 1777, and Father Catalá labored there with love and great personal sacrifice for thirty-six years until his death in 1830. Although he is not as well known as Saint Junipero Serra, Father Catalá won the devotion of the Native American converts and the Spanish settlers he served. When he died the mourning was universal; natives crowded his bier to obtain relics, snipping away pieces of his habit until his body was almost nude. When a new habit was put on the body, they did the same thing again. The Spaniards and the converted natives mourned his death vehemently, crying, "The saint has left us.” To read more, you can find a two-page biographical sketch of Father Catalá here.

A fascinating 1909 biography of Father Catalá titled The holy man of Santa Clara or, Life, virtues and miracles of Fr. Magin Catalá, O.F.M. is also free for download at The Internet Archive. It includes testimony from several reliable witnesses that was taken when Father Catalá's cause for canonization was opened that year. (Those letters still can be viewed in the University of Santa Clara Library Archives). Witnesses saw Father Catalá levitate when he prayed in front of a carved wooden life-sized crucifix from Mexico, and they reported that the figure of Christ detached his hands from the cross and laid them on Father Catalá shoulders. That very same crucifix hangs over an altar where the prayer will be recited for his canonization.

When a fire burned down the Mission in 1926, students and priests risked their lives to save the crucifix. Later, Father Catalá’s remains were retrieved from the ashes. As documented in the SCU archives, his remains were re-buried in the reconstructed church, at the Gospel side of the rebuilt side altar where the crucifix now hangs. His marble grave slab, whose carved inscription was formerly filled with gold, now is on the wall to the left of the altar. It's inspiring to realize that the music for the Gloria, Credo, and Sanctus that will be sung at the Mass on November 22 may well have been sung by the natives at the same form of the Mass at Mission Santa Clara back when Father Catalá was alive.

From Small Beginnings

The return of the Mass and the music came about this way: for the past 11 years, a group of lay people have organized an annual commemoration as close as possible to the death anniversary of Father Catalá, which falls on November 22, the feast of Saint Cecilia.

Eleven years ago, Canon Moreau was rector of the former Oratory of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Santa Clara about ten blocks away from SCU, and the first year he celebrated a Mass at the Oratory before he led a rosary procession to the Mission, where the group said the canonization prayer at the altar of the crucifix. After Canon Moreau was assigned to New Jersey, the institute priests who replaced him along with the late venerable diocesan priest Father William Stout continued the commemoration. Six years ago, the Jesuits who run the university granted permission for one traditional Latin Mass a year (the group was refused when they asked to reserve the Mission for a TLM to celebrate another event). For the next four years, the group was able to reserve the Mission for a Low Mass at the altar of the crucifix, and the oratory choir joined with the choir from Thomas More School in San José to sing the California Mission Mass. Last year the group was able to arrange for the first High Mass to be celebrated at the high altar, and finally this year they obtained permission for a Solemn High Mass, again at the high altar.

Masses in the SCU chapel for students are celebrated in the middle of the nave, with chairs with kneelers arranged around a simple altar, and the homily is given at a podium with a microphone. The organizers who set up the High Mass on November 22 will need to redirect the chairs to face towards the high altar and the liturgical east, and they will also need to bring in candles and altar cloths and Mass cards, but all will be a labor of love.

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Father Catala taught the converted natives to say this prayer when blessing themselves with holy water:

"Holy water, blessed by God, cleanse my body and save my soul."

Then while making the sign of the cross:

"By the sign of the holy Cross deliver us, O Lord, our God, from our enemies."

Jan Halisky, co-founder of the Familia Sancti Hieronymi, translated this prayer into Latin:

"Aqua sancta, a Deo benedicta, corpus meum lava et animam salva."

…

"O Domine, Deus noster, per signum sanctae Crucis, libera nos ab inimicis nostris"

Mr. Halisky told me he found it edifying that the book, The Holy Man of Santa Clara, recounted that Father Catala always insisted on the utmost reverence during every religious or ecclesiastical function, however slight. Much of the current Catholic world seems to have cast this reverence aside.

It’s easy to imagine that Father Catalá rejoices along with those who attend this yearly event, when, through the efforts of a persistent few of his devotees and some dedicated priests and choir members, the reverence and sacred music of the traditional Latin High Mass returns for one evening a year to the beautiful Mission Santa Clara.

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For More Information

Two articles about the yearly Mass have been published by California Catholic Daily:

• "Latin High Mass returns to Mission Santa Clara Church for an evening" and the following articles.
• "The Holy Man of Santa Clara: Traditional Latin Mass for canonization cause of Fr. Magin Catala"

This article about Father Catalá and the long history of devotion to him was published in Latin Mass Magazine:

• "Soul of Father Magin, Help Us: The Wonder Working Lesser-Known Missionary of the California Missions"