Mass at Our Lady of Walsingham

As described by Parousian Michael R. Denton:

Sunday morning we drove a little under an hour from our hotel to Our Lady of Walsingham for 10:30 Mass. However this Mass is a unique one in the Catholic Church in America. Our Lady of Walsingham is one of a total of six churches in the United States that is an “Anglican Use” parish. What this means is that the church used to be an Episcopalian Church and decided to convert to Catholicism. As part of this conversion, these churches received a special dispensation from the pope ( in Our Lady of Walsingham’s case Pope John Paul II) to adapt the Anglican liturgy to the Roman rite. What this results in is an English-translation of the Latin Mass, so if you’ve ever been to a Latin Mass you have a general idea of the peculiar feel of that type of Mass. One of the items that those of us accustomed to the usual Masses found interesting was the way in which communion was received. Communion was received in the old traditional way; that is there was a rail at the altar at which the communicant must kneel and await for the priest or deacon to come by to give the sacrament. It was also received in a way that is called “tincture,” which means that body is dipped into the blood before being placed on the tongue of the communicant. This should not have surprised us, as the Eucharist itself was performed in a very different manner. The altar at Our Lady of Walsingham is fixed to the back of the altar and the tabernacle so that the priest must celebrate the Eucharist facing the tabernacle rather than the congregation. Being so different from the current Mass in which the priest turns away from the tabernacle towards the congregation it did take some getting used to.

Another remarkable thing about the church was the amazing ability of the choir. These hymns were difficult for some of us in college to follow, and yet the choir was composed almost exclusively of young people. Having gone to the Latin Mass at St. Patrick’s in New Orleans, I was surprised because I had assumed that like St. Patrick’s this choir too would be composed of older individuals who would seemingly be better capable of understanding the complexities of the hymns. Yet here was a full choir full of girls and boys at junior high school age or younger able to sing. It must have taken a lot of dedication and work for those people to be able to accomplish such a feat with regularity, and to see that type of dedication in people so young devoted to the worship of the Lord is very uplifting and encouraging.

Although I’ve endeavored to explain some of the technicalities of the Anglican Use, this Mass as a unique experience in the American Catholic Church is incredibly uplifting and engaging. It is so beautiful that I can really do little more than to tell you to go for yourselves if you are ever near Houston so you can experience it for yourself. I’m posting the link to Our Lady of Walsingham’s main website which has some of the actual liturgy posted on it as well as a number of other interesting features. I also highly recommend that you take a look at the photos page which I'm also linking as the photos best capture the stunning beauty of this unique church.

Our Lady of Walsingham Main Page

Our Lady of Walsingham Photos