I've been working on the website for the Society of St. Gregory the Great, a group interesting in bringing and supporting the Traditional Latin Mass to Johnson County, Kansas.

As part of this project, I wanted to introduce the namesake to people who might be interested. Pope St. Gregory the Great is one of the most notable figures in Catholic history and worth getting to know.

Here is the story of Pope. St. Gregory the Great, reprinted from the Society's website.

Pope St. Gregory the Great was the 64th Pope of the Catholic Church. He was a monk, deacon, priest, pastor, papal nuncio, abbot and later pope, saint and Doctor of the Church.

Gregory was born in 540 as a citizen of Rome. By the time he was 30 years old, he had a successful political job as the Prefect of Rome, but decided to leave it for the monastic life. By all accounts, he loved living as a monk, dedicating his life to quiet contemplation of God and trying to make himself fit for Heaven by self-imposed discipline and long periods of fasting. He was called out of his cloistered monastic life by Pope Pelagius II when the Holy Father appointed Gregory as a Deacon of Rome in 579.

As Deacon (a job that is defined very differently than today), he served as an ambassador to the Court of Byzantium in Constantinople. It was a very tumultuous time for Rome, the Church and Gregory. The Lombards, enemies of Rome, were making military advances toward the city. The Church was encouraging political alliances with Tiberius in the Byzantine Court. And Gregory was trying to live a monastic life in a political job to the best of his ability, keeping time for prayers and scriptural study in additon to his duties to the Court. About 6 years later, when his appointment was over, he returned to his monastic life in Rome and soon became abbot of his community.

In this time, he learned of a youth slave trade in what is now England. The practice upset him so much that he set out to convert the Anglo world, getting permission from Pope Pelagius II, he took a handful of fellow monks and set out to convert Britain. It was here that he coined the clever phrase, "They are not Angles, but Angels"; Gregory is one of the patron saints of England.

By the time Gregory was 50 years old, Pelagius died and Gregory was elected as the Pope-- a job he reluctantly accepted. Pope Gregory would reign as pontiff for the next 14 years.

There were a number of different liturgies of the Church at this time with widely variant practices. Gregory is most notably known for sorting through these different liturgies and assembling a standard Mass for Christianity-- Scholars agree that this is the first thing that is fully recognizable as the Holy Mass, incorporating standard rubrics and fixed prayers that are still in use today. Even the style of Chant still used in Catholic liturgies today had its origin with this pope, the style is even still called "Gregorian Chant"!

Pope Gregory also taught and developed the doctrine of Purgatory, helped mould the papacy into a more authoritative office and is known as a great reformer of the Church. He presided over Christianity as it faced threats from the Huns, Goths and Lombards, he drained the papal treasury to ransom prisoners from the Lombards and Franks and gave abundant charity to the sick and poor.

In summing up his legacy, the Catholic Encyclopedia states it nicely:

It is beyond the scope of this notice to attempt any elaborate estimate of the work, influence, and character of Pope Gregory the Great, but some short focusing of the features given above is only just.

First of all, perhaps, it will be best to clear the ground by admitting frankly what Gregory was not. He was not a man of profound learning, not a philosopher, not a conversationalist, hardly even a theologian in the constructive sense of the term. He was a trained Roman lawyer and administrator, a monk, a missionary, a preacher, above all a physician of souls and a leader of men. His great claim to remembrance lies in the fact that he is the real father of the medieval papacy.

When he died on March 12, 604, St. Gregory was immediately canonized by public acclaim.

Pope St. Gregory the Great was the first person to be named "Doctor of the Church", the first monk to be elected to the papacy and the first pope to carry the title of "The Great". He personally founded seven monasteries, was one of the first popes to send missionaries out to foreign lands and gathered unity over lands in Europe to form what would later be called the "Papal States".

He is the patron saint of the papacy, the patron of school children, choirs and educators. He is the patron of a number of countries, of stone masons, of musicians. He is considered the founder of the ancient Mass and is the namesake of the Society of St. Gregory the Great.

St. Gregory the Great, ora pro nobis!

If you live in Johnson County and are interested in supporting the Traditional Latin Mass, please visit the website to find out what is going on with our group. We're making a lot of progress, but really need to show good broad-based support from people in our part of the Archdiocese. Please look into the Society and help by praying for us. We'll pray for you too!

Christopher at Lost Lambs writes:

As some of you may or may not know I have created a group called the "St Gregory the Great Society" for Catholics in Johnson County KS to organize and request a traditional Mass for the Johnson County Area in accordance with article V of Summorum Pontificum, while we have the ICRSS and the FSSP in the area neither are in Johnson County. The Facebook group can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19037047591 and we will have a web site up soon.

Today I made a formal request to use the chapel pictured above, as all in the group had thought that it was the perfct place in the area to hold the mass. Unfortunately we were denied. The meeting lasted less than two minutes I first inquired what would it take to use the chapel, he seemed open and willing but once the Pastor was aware that our group promoted the Ancient Mass, the Pastor felt inclined to tell me about his Love for Vatican II, his hatred of the Latin Language, he stated that Latin has no place in the Mass that Vatican II was the best thing for the church, that the Latin mass was divisive and he would NEVER allow any Latin mass at any of his parish facilities. I knew none of my arguments or discussions would change his mind, I thanked him for his time and left.

Well, we'll keep on trying.

Most of Johnson County is full of either round spaceship churches or square auditorium churches. The few old church buildings that survived the 60's were pretty much wreckovated, lest someone think that Catholics are inside.

Truthfully, the perfect location would only be icing on the cake. After all, generations of servicemen were able to worship on their knees in the mud with a crucifix on top of a munitions box, certainly we can find a place to glorify the Lord too.

Hopefully in a proper church, of course. My wife would be very upset to go to church every Sunday in the mud!

Still, it's a discouraging setback.

It's easy for people like me who read the Catholic news and blogs that seem to point to a resurrection of Tradition in the Church-- yet face such blunt oppostion; it's easy to get to thinking that everyone agrees with you on this stuff.

Indeed not.

It's okay though, we'll make it. But this might be the first a few places where we have to shake the dust from our sandals.

"He who would climb to a lofty height must go by steps, not leaps."
-- Pope St. Gregory the Great

The organization will be found online at http://www.GregoryTheGreat.org as soon as I get to working on that website.