2013 Baccalaureate Mass @ Thomas More College

On behalf of the 1963 class of Villa Madonna College, an apology to Sr. Margaret Stallmeyer SND, outgoing President for the way the 2013 Baccalaureate Mass was handled. The two master of ceremonies failed to be tasked with making sure the graduates and faculty had enough seating. Their job should extend beyond just the flow of the Mass. The pontifical servers managed the crosier and miter. No one managed the seating arrangements. Could no one count how many graduates there were? how many faculty there were? Did anyone do due diligence?

The point of a Mass is gathering of the people of God to worship. Anything that impedes that gathering needs addressing before the service proceeds. The ultimate responsibility for the gathering resides the presider and the community itself. Sr Margaret and some of the faculty are to be congratulated for their makeshift adaptation.

It is symptomatic of the problem that the homily used politics in the USA in the 1960s as a point of departure and not the renewal of the whole church in the twentieth century, which peaked in the 1960s. The election of a Catholic and his assassination three years later are not seminal moments in the life of the country nor of the church. The renewal of the church is good news of greater importance.

But it is symbolic that this happened while a woman was president of the college but the person effectively in charge of the ceremony was a bishop. Besides showing a lack of respect, it showed a shallow appreciation of the state of the world today, and the state of the church in the world.

Attention to cultic ceremonial details should not supersede the need to attend to fundamental symbolic actions which should mirror the basis for and composition of the community.