Mater Misericordiae Mission welcomes new pastor

By Joyce Coronel | Aug. 6, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

Mater Misericordiae Mission, which celebrates the Tridentine Mass every Sunday at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, welcomed a new pastor July 26.

Fr. Joseph Terra, FSSP, will take over for Fr. Kenneth Fryar, FSSP, who led the congregation for the last three years and has been reassigned to Guadalajara, Mexico. Parishioners held a farewell potluck luncheon for him following a July 5 Mass.

The celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite — commonly called the Tridentine Mass — has been a growing trend over the last few years. It is celebrated in Latin.

Pope Benedict XVI issued a motu proprio, titled Summorum Pontificum, that went into effect Sept. 14, 2007. The biggest change that stemmed from the motu proprio was that priests no longer had to ask permission from the local bishop to celebrate Mass according to the 1962 Missal.

About 150 dioceses in the United States now allow the Tridentine Masses on Sundays.

Visitors to the Mater Misericordiae Mission are sure to notice the stunning degree of reverence displayed by the congregation of about 200 people of all ages.

There’s no chit-chat or gum chewing in the pews. Women are attired in skirts that fall below their knees. A table stationed near the entrance to the sanctuary holds a basket of spare chapel veils along with a small sign requesting that women “wear a veil while in church out of respect for Our Lord.”

Eight altar boys assist at the Mass, where the priest faces the altar during the consecration, his back to the congregation. Nearly everyone is following along in a Missal. Young mothers silently point out the words to their children.

Fr. Terra, the new pastor of Mater Misericordiae, served in Dallas for four years before coming to Phoenix. Before that, he was a member of the faculty at the Our Lady of Guadalupe seminary in Nebraska.

The seminary forms priests for membership in the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, to which both Fr. Terra and Fr. Fryar belong.  These are priests who do not take religious vows, but who work together for a common mission in the world.

“The Latin Mass has been the Church’s heritage for a long time. You’re talking about something ancient — it goes back 1,500 years,” Fr. Terra said. “St. Gregory the Great would feel quite at home at the altar at St. Thomas the Apostle. That’s continuity.” 

Young families and young adults are prominent in the congregation, a fact that Fr. Terra explained stands contrary to popular belief.

“There’s a presumption that young people would not go to the Latin Mass, that it would be blue-haired elderly women,” he said as the 31-year-old organist, Homer Ferguson, introduced himself to the new pastor.

Fr. Terra said the society’s seminary in Nebraska has 60 to 70 men studying to become priests who will eventually celebrate Mass in Latin.

Joe Bright, chairman of the pastoral council for Mater Misericordiae, said the community is in the process of collecting funds to build its own church.

“We want to build something magnificent for the greater glory of God. We want a parish with traditional beauty,” Bright said. Mater Misericordiae, he said, attracts people from as far away as Buckeye and Fountain Hills. The building and pastoral committees are looking at properties that would be near freeway access to facilitate the commute.

Their hope is to build a church that seats at least 250, with a main altar and side altars, in a cruciform facing east. “Something that will rival the beautiful churches of our ancestors,” Bright said. “It’s a timeless beauty.”

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted acknowledged the pastoral leadership of Fr. Fryar during the first few years of the community’s existence and welcomed the new pastor, Fr. Terra, asking God to bless him with abundant graces.

“Over the past five years, Mater Misericordiae Mission has come into being and grown into a thriving Catholic community. With its daily celebration of the Holy Mass in Latin according to the 1962 Missal of Blessed John XXIII, it reminds us of the roots of the Latin Rite in the Church,” the bishop said.

“I praise God for the way that the laity and their pastor have worked together to build a cohesive community of faith and charity, finding its primary source in Christ in the Eucharist,” he added.