I have always wanted to attend a pre-55 Holy Week and today I got the chance. Kind of. Sort of. Since the SSPX does the '62 and and the indult does the pre-55 sort of, I decided to check out the indult. It is okay because Sean Johnson is fawning over the sedes' Holy Week so I know I can be forgiven. It was the Church of the Holy Innocents in Manhattan and the priest was the pastor Father Miara.
I followed along in my missal which I usually don't do at Mass. But I got confused during the petitions to the various groups of people. I got lost. I think my Father Lasance Missal does not have all the prayers in it. And then I noticed Father was praying the prayer for the Jews and I paid close attention. It was not the prayer for the "perfidis Judaeis" as it says in my 'reprint of the '45 missal, so I figured it must be the Benedict XVI prayer for the Jews. When the time came I did not genuflect. Almost everyone else genuflected. After that there was a lot of singing from the choir. And they brought out the cross. I was surprised at the end they gave out Communion to all the faithful, which I thought was forbidden on Good Friday. My missal says only the priest takes Communion on Good Friday, except that a few hosts are reserved in case someone is dying and needs Viaticuм. So I did not go up for Communion as I thought I should not on Good Friday.
And that was pretty much it. The Benedict prayer and people Communion, but otherwise a beautiful service. I did not get bored at all even though I only read the Latin in the Missal and did not understand the words. It was an hour and fifty minutes.