My parents were married in an Anglican Church but did not practice the faith as far as I knew because during my childhood I don’t recall my parents ever going to Church. My brother and I were baptized when babies. Anyway, my journey to Catholicism came later when I was nearing twenty, around 1978, my paternal grandfather befriended a well known French priest in Kuala Lumpur - Rev. Fr. Peter De Crocq of Jesus Caritas Church in Kepong. My grandfather was already in his eighties at that time and did not drive nor had a car. My father volunteered to take him to church every Sunday. At that time, we lived in Subang Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur; my grandfather resided in Petaling Jaya Section 14 and the church is located in Kepong Baru, Kuala Lumpur a total of about 22 km one way. We did for a few years, which eventually saw the the baptism of my grandfather from non-Christian to Catholic in 1979, and the baptism of my family, my father’s two sisters’ family and his brother’s family in 1981, a total of 16 of us in one baptismal ceremony in Jesus Caritas Church. During our years at Jesus Caritas, my cousins and I, got involved with the church choir and were happily singing the Novus Ordo songs and strumming guitars. Ha ha. A couple of times, we even participated in charismatic sessions. Ah.. such ignorant fools :) In 1982, Diana, then my fiance got baptized and we got married in December 1984. We became regular parishioners of that Church until 1985 when in July Fr. De Crocq passed away. Eventually, without our “beloved” priest, we became lapsed Catholics. (I then realized that our attraction to the Church was due more to the charisma of Fr. De Crocq, his sermons and personality which was wrong.) So for a number of years, we only went to church when we felt like it and we went to the other churches in the district as we lived in different addresses. Then in the early 1990s, we began following the Rosa Mystica devotion (a series of 9 day Rosary novena at the homes of faithfuls who would host the statue of Our Lady of the Rosa Mystica.) It was well known in this devotion that faithful sometimes experience the fragrance of roses during the Rosary sessions. It was a neighbour of ours who was pestering my wife to join in this Rosary devotion held in their home. On that day when my wife first attended the Rosary, she returned home and the fragrance of roses accompanied her home and I smelled it. It was then we both decided to join the devotion; and the following week, we received the statue into our home for a 9 day novena. The Rosary said was not the current 5 decades but praying all the 15 decades daily for nine days. (There was no such thing as the Luminous Mysteries. It’s not Catholic tradition anyway.) Eventually we formed a regular group of devotees to the Rosa Mystica. During this time our group of friends became more and more unhappy with how the N.O. Masses were conducted in the Churches we go to, as we witness the strange ways and unedifying sermons from priests. After sometime, one of our friends, Adrian, came across information on an Order of traditional priests who only say the traditional Latin Mass. He wrote to them and eventually. In 1992, they sent us a priest: Fr. Gentili who came all the way from Wanganui, New Zealand. So we had our first experience of the Traditional Latin Mass in the home of Adrian. From then one, a priest was able to visit us once, every 3 months, staying for a few days at Adrian’s home. Sometime in early 1994, Adrian and his family migrated to Wanganui to be closer to the Mass and traditional Catholic community. Due to some circumstances, I landed up renting his home in T.T.D.I. after he migrated. Therefore, my family landed up taking Adrian’s place in hosting the priests’ visits. By this time, we already had 3 children, Nigel, Daryl and Gabriel. Nigel was about 12 years old and he learnt to serve Mass in Latin. We were still going to N.O. Mass when the traditional priest was not visiting; but after some months of Catechism from the traditonal priest, in 1993 we decided to fully embrace traditional Catholicism and stopped going to the local churches. In the same year, the traditional Order of priests set up a base in Manila, Philippines and were able to visit us bi-monthly. We also started home schooling our children thanks to the guidance given to us by Fr. Demerode who was our regular visiting priest who also covered India. We eventually had 5 children (4 boys and 1 girl) who were home schooled; the boys at 15 years were sent to a traditional Catholic boarding school and completed their studies up to the Cambridge A levels. My daughter was sent to Dominican boarding school in New Zealand for 5 years and completed her Cambridge ICGSE. In 1996, we moved to Sungai Buloh and because of the distance from most of the group following the Latin Mass, another friend in our group, Jimmy, hosted the Mass and the priest at his home in Petaling Jaya. Mass was slowly becoming more regular from once in a couple of months to monthly. Then in 2000, we were able to offer a shop lot in Bukit Rahman Putra, Sungai Buloh, to be a chapel for the Mass. The Traditional Latin Mass finally had a chapel in honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mass was held fortnightly and eventually every Sunday there was Mass at this chapel. Due to the proximity of the chapel to our home in Sungai Buloh, my family were the caretakers of the chapel. Every Saturday, my 5 children and I would clean and prepare the chapel for Sunday prayers or Mass. This carried on for 16 years. In 2016 the chapel moved to an address in Bukit Jalil under the management of the chapel association and in 2019 the chapel moved to Petaling Jaya at the present address. |
Details
AuthorAn artist, entrepreneur, a loving family man, 30 years a Catholic traditionalist upholding traditions for the love of God. Shop for Catholic giftsArchives
January 2024
Categories
All
|