Manhattan, USA - A Roman Catholic Mass was held Sunday in Midtown Manhattan that seemed to be from another time. The women covered their heads with delicate lace veils and the priest said the Mass in Latin with his back to the congregation.
Their missals, or booklets, were dated 1962, the year that the Second Vatican Council began ushering modernization and openness into the Catholic Church, changes that the worshipers at Sunday’s Mass reject.
The Mass was held by the Society of Saint Pius X, a deeply conservative and traditional group that has been at odds with the church since it was founded by a French archbishop in 1970 to protest the changes spurred by Vatican II.
On Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI offered a dramatic signal of rapprochement between the Vatican and the society when he revoked the excommunication of four of its bishops, including one, Richard Williamson, who has made comments denying the Holocaust and speculating that the United States government orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks.
The men were removed from the church after they were made bishops in a ceremony in 1988 that was not recognized by the Vatican.
Leaders of the society, which has a network of schools, churches and seminaries around the world, have distanced themselves in official statements from Bishop Williamson’s remarks, saying that they did not reflect the society’s views.
On Sunday, several congregants repudiated Bishop Williamson’s statements, which he has made in interviews, while saying that the reinstatement of four of their bishops had brought a profound, if measured, sense of relief.
Others said they felt as if they never left the Roman Catholic faith. “We don’t believe we are coming back to the church now because we were always back in the church,” said Clemente Ruiz, 54, a musician from Brooklyn.
But Joe Smetona, 23, a graduate student at Columbia who was raised going to society Masses, said Bishop Williamson’s comments were “obviously unacceptable” and “only served to sow discord.”
Regarding Benedict’s decision on the bishops, Mr. Smetona said he hoped it signaled a return to a more traditional Roman Catholic Church. “But if the whole spirit of tradition is extinguished, then I’m concerned,” he added.
The Manhattan congregation is small, with Masses attracting 40 to 50 people a week. On Sunday, most of the worshipers were middle-aged or older and most were men. The services were held in a gently worn room that the society rents at the Soldiers’, Sailors’, Marines’, Coast Guard and Airmen’s Club, a hotel for members of the armed forces on Lexington Avenue.
Priests travel to say Mass each week from Ridgefield, Conn., which is home to a church operated by the society with five priests and roughly 800 members, according to the Rev. Gerardo Zendejas, who led the Mass in Manhattan.
The Rev. Arnaud Rostand, who as the society’s leader in the United States is based at its national headquarters in Kansas City, Mo., said the society has 50,000 to 70,000 followers nationwide and 600,000 to 1 million worldwide. He said he believed the pope’s decision would boost the society’s numbers.
“We work within the Catholic Church for the restoration of the Catholic Mass and the traditional teaching of the church,” Father Rostand said.
At Sunday’s service, several worshipers said that in their view Catholicism as it was practiced before Vatican II was the true version of the faith. They also saw traditional Catholicism as an antidote to the crises that have befallen the Catholic Church, from priest sex scandals to plummeting Mass attendance.
Another congregant, Jerome Rosenbloom, 45, who lives in Brooklyn, said that he rejected what has often been described as “supermarket” Catholicism, with adherents picking and choosing whatever aspects of the faith suited them.
“We’re holding on to the traditions, passed down from the councils in the past and the teachings of the popes,” he said.
Mr. Rosenbloom also said the lifting of the excommunications would allow society adherents to feel less stigmatized: “I think people will feel a lot more comfortable.”