Name of Church Saint Margaret Mary
Address 1219 Excelsior Avenue, Oakland, CA 94610
Phone number 510-482-0596
Website www.stmargmaryoak.org
Mass times Saturday vigil, 5 p.m. (English); Sundays, 7 a.m. (Low Mass with organ, extraordinary form), 8:30 a.m. (English), 10:30 a.m. (Latin High Mass, ordinary form), 12:30 p.m. (Latin High Mass, extraordinary form); weekdays, 8 a.m. (English) and 6 p.m. (Latin, extraordinary form, except Thursdays, when it is at noon and the 6 p.m. Mass is in English); Saturdays, 8 a.m. (English) and 10 a.m. (Latin, extraordinary form); Holy Days, 8 a.m. (English), 10:30 a.m. (Latin, ordinary form), 6 p.m. (Latin, extraordinary form) and 7:30 p.m. (English).
Confessions Tuesdays, 2-3:30 p.m.; Fridays, 2-3 p.m.; Saturdays, 4-4:50 p.m.; Sundays, a half-hour before the 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Masses; or call the rectory for an appointment.
Names of priests Father Stanislaw Zak, pastor. Father Rafal Duda, parochial administrator. Canon Olivier Meney of the Institute of Christ the King, Episcopal Delegate for the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite in the Diocese of Oakland. The priests give instructive homilies in accordance with the teachings of the Church.
School No.
Special devotions Liturgy of the Hours: Lauds, weekdays, 7:45 a.m. and Sundays, 8:15 a.m. Vespers and Compline as announced.
Holy Hours and Adoration: Every Thursday eve preceding First Fridays, following the 6 p.m. Mass. Benediction every 3rd Wednesday of the month, after the 6 p.m. (extraordinary form) Mass. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Chaplet on Fridays, 2 to 3 p.m. (confessions heard during this time). Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on Saturdays, 4 to 4:45 p.m. (while confessions are heard). Concludes with Benediction.
There are also seasonal devotions; check the website.
Special parish groups St. Anne’s Guild, members help care for the church and sponsor many parish events, such as the St. Patrick’s Day Dinner and Oktoberfest. St. Vincent de Paul Society.
Liturgy English and Latin, both ordinary and extraordinary forms.
Music The parish choir, under the direction of David Sundahl, sings Sundays at the 10:30 a.m. Mass. There are several choirs serving the parish, including the children’s Choir of the Angelus, Pacific Collegium Choir and the women’s Sacred Heart Choir. Music is from the classic tradition, as well as modern music sung in the classic style. Visitors can also experience Gregorian chant and classical polyphony. The parish also has a Moeller pipe organ, refurbished and embellished a decade ago. Visit the parish website for the music schedule.
Fellow parishioners Although St. Margaret Mary is a small parish geographically, it draws families seeking its traditional environment from miles around. Its members come from different parts of the San Francisco Bay area.
Parking The lot is small, and can fill up during Sunday Masses. There usually isn’t a problem finding parking on the street, which is generally safe during the daytime.
Acoustics Good
Cry room None
Literature In addition to the parish bulletin, you can borrow an English-Latin missal if you need one.
Additional observations St. Margaret Mary is a small parish that is conservative and traditional. It is the only parish of the Diocese of Oakland which offers a daily Latin Tridentine Mass. It’s an attractive older church, completed and dedicated in 1931. The bishop of the Diocese, Michael Barber, visited the parish recently to mark the 10th anniversary of the Institute’s apostolate at the church. The bishop assisted at the Mass, and delivered a sermon on the meaning of the Mass.
Thanks for featuring this church. I have been wanting to attend Mass there but haven’t made it so far.
The funny thing is that I didn’t realize they had Ordinary Form Masses. I always hear of St. Margaret Mary in Oakland in the context of the Institute of Christ the King and the Extraordinary Form. It’s good to see the the Extraordinary Form and the Ordinary Form (in English and Latin!) existing side by side!
No wonder people from all over the Bay Area are drawn to Mass there!
Among the countless joys of worshipping at a Latin Mass, hearing Latin spoken while holding a missal allows one to acquire some facility with Latin virtually effortlessly, which deepens one’s appreciation of the roots of many words in the English language and makes learning other languages seem rather natural. I suggest taking your children to Latin Mass for these and countless other reasons, just as the well-to-do are advised to hire nannies for their children who speak foreign languages their children can easily pick up. Facility in a foreign language is a wonderful asset in life, and Romance languages are broadly rooted in Latin.
If you want your children exposed to a second language, one that is actually spoken by real people, one that is a Romance language, why not just take them to the Spanish language mass that is already in most parishes? Why not enroll them in an immersion class? Why not have them play with their latino classmates?
Probably because the Latin language is among the countless joys of worshipping at a Latin Mass…
Ha!
I love it!
One of our priests says this happened to him once: a family took him to what they thought was a Latin Mass, but it was in Spanish.
They couldn’t tell the difference.
Marin County Man,
When the family referred to “Latin”, they must have meant “Latin American”. It’s true that there’s no difference between Latin American Mass and Spanish Mass. But there’s a huge difference between the Latin Mass and the Ordinary Form Mass.
I suspect the family used some humor with the priest.
Your Fellow “Catholic,” LATIN has been the official language of the Roman Catholic Church, for about 2,000 years!! Don’t you know that?? Even though the Church had Vatican II, with a New Mass, and worship in the vernacular languages of the lay people– Latin is still the official language, and the Holy Father always writes his encyclicals, and important documents– in Latin!! And even the post-Vatican II Roman Missal, is always first published in Latin, with updated changes, at times– and next, it is translated, and published in the various modern vernacular languages, of the world. Church Latin is a HOLY language!!
Actually, Latin was a secular language, the language of those who worshipped false gods. Adopted for political and practical reasons by the Church in Rome because of an empire that had spread far beyond the banks of the Tiber.
As a liturgical language, neither the last supper (the first mass) nor masses in the Eastern Churches, were in Latin. There is some logic to continuing to use Latin for Church documents, however. It’s dead-ness means it’s meaning is more or less fixed. However, it has some problems expressing concepts and things that came after the evolution of the language ceased.
I went to this parish for mass and I was amazed at the high percentage of young families at St Margaret Mary. Then I went the next weekend to my local hippee parish where most attendees are over 55 and single.
That’s just it TLM communities abound in YOUNG FAMILIES the notion that only “old foggies” attend the TLM is just an utter lie by those who hate the True Mass of All Times!
LOVE the Tridentine Mass, at St. Margaret Mary church, in Oakland!! A tremendous gift to the Bay Area, for many years!
LINDA MARIA TELLS US: “Latin is still the official language, and the Holy Father always writes his encyclicals, and important documents– in Latin!!”
Yet she is quite wrong.
The Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge” issued by Pope Pius XI was the first papal encyclical written in German.
The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” (a rather important document, one would say) was written in French, published in 1992, and only later translated into other tongues.