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| By the time Pope Benedict meets his maker, he and his predecessor will have proven in spades, two popes outrank an ecumenical council. In the meantime the exodus out the doors will have more or less destroyed the living Church in the West. |
Vatican Preparing a Manual to Help Priests Celebrate Mass
Prefect Warns Against Making Liturgy Into a 'Show'H. Sergio Mora - ROME, January 16, 2013 (Zenit.org).The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments is preparing a booklet to help priests celebrate the Mass properly and the faithful to participate better, according to the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.
Cardinal Antonio Cañizares confirmed this Tuesday at an address at the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See on "Catholic Liturgy since Vatican II: Continuity and Evolution."
"We are preparing it; it will help to celebrate well and to participate well. I hope it will come out this year, in the summer," the cardinal told ZENIT.
During his talk the cardinal reiterated the importance Vatican II gave to the liturgy, "whose renewal must be understood in continuity with the Tradition of the Church and not as a break or discontinuity." A break either because of innovations that do not respect continuity or because of an immobility that freezes everything at Pius XII, he said. (It's beginning to look like the only aspects not frozen with Pius XII will be the use of the vernacular. Well, at least the latinized version of the vernacular.)
In particular, Cardinal Cañizares stressed the importance that Sacrosanctum Concilium gave to the sacred liturgy, through which "the work of our Redemption is exercised, above all in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist," adding that "God wants to be adored in a concrete way and it's not up to us to change it."
The cardinal said that there is talk of a renewed Church, which must not be understood as a mere reform of structures, but as a change starting with the liturgy, because it is from the liturgy that the work of our salvation is effected. (I am at a loss as to where God has specifically given concrete directions for how He wants to be worshiped. Perhaps this just didn't translate well.)
When speaking of the liturgy, continued the cardinal, one must not forget what the conciliar document states: "Christ is always present in his Church, especially in the liturgical action. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, be it in the person of the minister, 'offering himself now through the ministry of the priests as he then offered himself on the cross,' be it especially under the Eucharistic species."
He stressed that the objective of the liturgy "is the adoration of God and the salvation of men," which is not a creation of ours, but source and summit of the Church." (Back in time we go to a theology which elevates the priest and elevates the atonement aspects of one tradition of Catholic theology above any others.)
The prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments criticized existing abuses such as showmanship, and praised moments of silence "that are action," which enable the priest and the faithful to talk with Jesus Christ and which exclude the predominance of words that often becomes showmanship on the part of the priest. The correct attitude is the one "indicated by Saint John the Baptist, when he says he must decrease and the Messiah must increase."
The cardinal criticized the effort to make the Mass "entertaining" with certain songs -- instead of focusing on the mystery -- in an attempt to overcome "boredom" by transforming the Mass into a show.
He added that the Council did not speak of the priest celebrating Mass facing the people, that it stressed the importance of Christ on the altar, reflected in Benedict XVI's celebration of the Mass in the Sistine Chapel facing the altar. This does not exclude the priest facing the people, in particular during the reading of the word of God. He stressed the need of the notion of mystery, and particulars such as the altar facing East and the fact that the sacrificial sense of the Eucharist must not be lost. (So here it is, by the summer Rome will have declared that priests once again face the wall and the traditionalists will have won yet another liturgical point without input from any other views.)
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Slowly but ever so surely, the Novus Ordo is being 'reformed' into the vernacular version of the Tridentine Rite. The Vatican could have saved everyone a lot of angst with a little honesty. They could have come out of their Tridentine closet years ago and just said" "those of us who grew up in the Latin Rite and enjoyed all that priestly status it entailed, do not like this more egalitarian Mass which de emphasizes mystery and priestly magic for the sake of community and lay involvement. The lay don't need to be involved. They can be bored or pray their rosaries." The fact it's taken them this long only means that now we can fiddle with our smart phones or read our Ipads without fearing any dirty looks from the priest who will conveniently once again have his back to us.
I keep going back to the one meditation I did about six years ago when I was shown that the Vatican would indeed do everything in it's power to roll back the core concepts of Vatican II, that collegiality would give way to dictatorship, that subsidiarity would give way to micro management from Rome, that the laity would again be reduced to passive sponges, that the Mass would once again return to a magic ritual in which the Resurrection would take a very very distant second place to Crucifixion so necessary for atonement theology and a male priesthood, and that the Way Jesus taught would be buried under papal idolatory and papal decrees.
So far this is all coming true, and it's abusive in it's execution. I had hoped that the sexual abuse scandal would at least delay the implementation of some of this, but once JPII started appointing bishops on the basis of loyalty oaths rather than ability, that became an empty hope. Pope Benedict has only accelerated the process, and the older he gets, the more acceleration, as if his goal is to have everything back in it's proper pre Vatican II order before he dies. He's probably going to get his mission accomplished, but at what price?
How many souls must be turned away to save the few who will be left in the West. Apparently it doesn't matter and that is the saddest part of all of this 'reform'.
Another great Monday post that has helped clarify my feelings into a coherant thought. The pope is adament about standing in the way of my following Christ. It is coming to be time to choose: Do I follow Christ or the pope? Maybe time will work the details out for us soon. I hope.
ReplyDeleteMore on abuse from Today's LA Times, no wonder Ratzie wants to hide behind Novus Ordo.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-church-files-20130122,0,3114631.story
Wow....This is pretty damning. Cardinal Mahony is going to have a very embarrassing day in court if these letters are admitted as evidence in any further proceedings. But so are any therapists of any sort who didn't report these guys. I can pretty much guarantee if Fr. Garcia were Mr. Garcia therapists would have reported. There would have been no Archbishop Mahony calling them for updates and essentially passively dictating their procedures.
DeleteThe priest quoted at the end of the article is the only one who had any connection to Jesus in his soul. That is saddest of all.
If you enter the sanctuary to worship god then this is a blessing. If you enter the sanctuary to be entertained then this is drudgery.
ReplyDeleteIf you really need to discuss things with your friends then do so outside while the rest of us talk to God in the sanctuary.
Russ, and while I talk to my friends out in the parking lot I will be sure to remember the sanctuary is all about you and your needs.
DeleteI really do get a chuckle out of conservatives who moan that progressives want to make the Church all about them and their needs. That is a universal truth.
Jesus does not need out adoration or worship, being internally perfect and complete and self-aware.
ReplyDeleteYou make a false analogy to enterntainment. It is the Latin Mass which is most like entertainment, reducing the praying assemble to mere audience for the performances of the clergy and their road crews.
Fourteen times the highest teaching authority in the Roman Church, and Ecumenical Council, repeated that the liturgy, to work as it should, requires the full, conscious, and active participation of all present.
If you are a lay person, you are not likely to be in the sanctuary to address God. If you mistakenly believe that God is in the sanctuary instead of among the people of God, then you need to re-read the Gospels.
Indeed, liturgy is not a discussion period, but neither is it for the benefit of God. Liturgy is God's gift to the Church in order to strengthen God's people.
The sevices and accretions of the Tridentine Latin Mass are human creations, developments mostly from of theological statements and of royal court practices. It has almost completely lost its connections with its origins of synagogue worship where those studying scripture indeed talked to each other and the communal meal where people did actually take and eat in memory of Jesus.
"Liturgy is God's gift to the Church in order to strengthen God's people."
DeletePrecisely, it's to strengthen God's people, not just the clergy or their exalted status in the minds of the laity.
I have been presiding at the liturgy for forty plus years. I don't need a manual to tell me how to do it. I'd appreciate a version of the sacramentary that helped me relate to myself and God's people and not the piece of garbage Benedict with the help of Cardinal Pell has foisted on us.
ReplyDeleteSad thing is it doesn't matter what you or I think. I'm still looking for the blue print the Vatican must have where God detailed how He wanted to be worshiped.
DeleteLife is a constant dying and resurrection. The key is on the resurrection. Resurrection is the key to Christian faith; why the emphasis on crucifiction? It's a way to keep power over the sheep.
ReplyDeleteSearcher
Jesus said 'do this in memory of me' before he died. He re enacted it on the road to Emmaus after He rose. I would think that might say something about using the Mass as a sacrificial remembrance. Especially since none of the 'first priests' except for John are actually recorded as witnessing the Crucifixion. But what do I know.
DeleteWow! Did I get it wrong all these years? I didn't know my salvation was based upon the liturgy. I thought it came from following Christ by like, serving the poor, standing up for the oppressed, visiting the sick, etc., etc. Duh! How stupid could I have been...what was I thinking....
ReplyDeleteColleen,
ReplyDeleteIt is probably worth acknowledging that a significant portion of people, including a number among my generation, are not happy with many aspects of the reformed Mass as it is often celebrated. Now, I am not in favour and do not support many tendencies or aspects of the rising conservative and restorationist tide in the church, but I have to say that I have attended many celebrations of the Mass in my time that indeed seemed to prize the horizontal/ communal in such a way as to the serious detriment of any meaningful spiritual/ transcendental experience, and with too sharp a contrast with the Catholic tradition historically understood.
This is not all vain nostalgia and fantasy. Even decades after the Council, aspects of the pre-conciliar spirituality survived and certain things glimmered and sparkled to us. In some places they were spoken of with great reverence, in others downplayed and demeaned. Conflicting signals were and are sent about what Catholic religion really is.
What you often deride as a "magic piety" is important to many people, not all of whom are monsters and are themselves genuinely "spiritual". Not every lay person actually desires the kind of participation you imagine we do, nor are edified by the same kind of community gestures you find valuable. Frankly, for me a lot of it is almost unendurably trite, appears concocted and out of place. The rampant and hypocritical moralism of much of the hierarchy is certainly a great problem for the Church and much to blame for empty pews. However, to report from my experiences , most of the young people of my age did not take the platitudes of community, togetherness, spirit-filled, diversity, and sentimental love all that seriously– along with the baggage of the old moral customs that were sloughed off quite easily, that so many could see, by the time of adolescence, these prohibitions were just the peeling snake skin to the body of a new cultural reality.
My generation experienced the Catholic religion at its least bigoted and intolerant, and I'm nearly the only practicing Catholic from among my school peers that I know of.
I think this indicates neither the liberal nor reactionary version of events quite adds up.
Some acknowledgment that the Church's liturgy was perhaps too flattened is an important step. I'm inclined to think the saying is being proven true (somewhat modified) that "excessive action in one direction usually sets up a reaction in the opposite direction. This happens in seasons, in plants, in bodies and, last but not least, in liturgies" (original 'constitutions') (Republic VIII 563e).
Now, who started this "excessive action", who is to blame? I think I've said before, if one rocks the canoe too hard, everyone might fall out.
Where the new Mass celebrated in the most radical contradistinction to centuries of actual continuous practice, the historical basis of Catholic for practice today is under cut and doubt is fostered. Yes, for reasons quite different than the hierarchy's moral scandals, but doubt nonetheless.
My point is you might have found so much of the Catholicism of your youth stifling and repressive. In an age of absolute permission, the experience is increasingly the opposite. For those attracted to Catholicism today, it often appears too free, too accommodating, too sentimental. I hope you will not willfully misread that. Indeed, the general feeling that our society needs "new rubrics" (read new limitations) is one of the things I think undergirding these wars. It will be the misapplication of the need for more or different kinds of boundaries to foster the moral life and true spiritual growth that will become a baneful fascism-- but not the need itself, only its misapplication.
My hope is both extremes do not consume and destroy each other. But for this to happen, we need to change the narrative about reform. Perhaps not what happened. Indeed, a break. But why? That's my opinion.
@Jordan St. Francis,
Delete(What a great name, by the way!)
Excellent comment. I fear for you, even though you are aware that your need may be taken advantage by admirers of movements like Opus Dei, the Legionnaires of Christ and others whose organizational foundations resemble the fascist. Beware! Don't drink the Kool-aid.
You long for more structure? Do you think the people here were rolling around in the mud at Woodstock? Think again.
The hierarchy has turned its back on the morality it teaches and is supposed to follow. Watch carefully. They are about to turn their backs on us, the ordinary members of the church.
In context this "reform" is not a return to a nostalgic past you long for because that ideal never existed.
p2p
DeleteClick on this link and observe the first couple of pictures. This is the Novus Ordo. Not exactly sure what's going on there, but it is illustrative of the theology of those at the big table and those who attend this service.
https://www.google.com/search?q=nuns+around+altar+in+los+angeles&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=uKgAUfPuHYqg2QWYpIGAAw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=768&bih=928
This picture is from the Los Angeles cathedral (sic) while run by Cardinal (sic) Roger Mahoney - the Least Reverend; the same Roger Mahoney of whom it has now been proven by recently released documents, to have been a key person in the pedophile priest scandal. Mahoney deliberately, and knowingly, shuttled criminal priests to Mexico to keep them from facing justice. He then spent years lying to the police and to the world about his involvement.
Now look at any of the pictures associated with this link:
https://www.google.com/search?q=traditional+catholic+mass&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=vqQAUbzRBKeE2wXP14DgAQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=768&bih=928
This is the Mass of the Roman Rite or the Traditional Latin Mass, sometimes erroneously referred to as the Tridentine Mass.
There is a correlation between the first set of pictures and the criminal behavior of Novus Ordo priests and their superiors like Mahoney. It's all in the theology. (Sic). In 1985 Mahoney was loved by the "spirit of Vatican II" types. Not so much by Traditional Catholics who, sadly, feel a sense of vindication. Not to suggest that Novus Ordoans sought to make victims of children, but it was inevitable IMHO. We believe as we pray; we behave according to what we believe.
Anon that's a nice try except St Peter Damien was railing about this issue of clergy sexual abuse 500 years before the Tridentine Mass. Clergy sexual abuse has been around a very long time. It's not an invention of the Spirit of Vatican II.
DeleteMahony and Law and Bevilaqua and Egan and on and on irrespective of theological or liturgical preferences all hid abusers. They may have disagreed with each other on some issues, but all protected the long black line almost without exception. And of course there was Maciel and Cardinal Groer and no one considered them remotely associated the "Spirit of Vatican II" but they most certainly were sexual abusers, both of whom were protected by JPII,
Good comments, Jordan St. Francis. Something to think about. Interesting.
DeleteMark
You've got some historical inaccuracies that need some correction. St. Peter Damien endeavored to stamp out many abuses. In particular, it is generally recognized that in the course of the tenth century and the first half of the eleventh the moral life of the church deteriorated in continental Europe and at Rome in particular. Simony and clerical sexual immorality were felt to be the two central themes of his efforts to reform. it is known that the clergy in Milan were publicly marrying. His Liber Gomorrah was a treatise written to denounce homosexual acts, particularly by members of the clergy, including pederast acts. It is unclear whether we wrote his treatise in reaction to actual events. Some historians do not think so. I believe he did. However, there is no evidence of any pederast problem like we face today. Interesting that his prediction, a homosexual clergy leading to a pederast clergy, seems to have come to fruition since the ban has not been enforced since shortly before Vatican 2. It is that "spirit" that has led the Church into the mess it's currently in. Remember too that the Church dealt with corrupt and criminal priests in the past. Not so today.
DeleteThere is no such thing as the Tridentine Mass. The word Tridentine refers to the Council of Trent or anything stemming from it. That council did not invent and promulgate a new, "Tridentine" mass; it codified the existing Roman Rite for all time. Historians, chief among them Father Adrian Fortescue, trace the Roman Rite to early Christianity. St. Peter wrote the first Latin liturgy; most historians believe he was assisted by St. Paul. The Roman Rite codified by Pope St. Pius V is essentially the same liturgy but with a few more prayers. Other Rites were forbidden by the pope (Pius V) unless they had been in use for at least 200 years. This was due to the numerous regional accretions that had been added, thus affecting the unity of worship among the faithful. So, the only things "Tridentine" about the Roman (Latin) Liturgy was that the dogmatic council of Trent dealt with the innate theology of the Mass (transubstantiation etc.), and the pope issued his outstanding Papal Bull, Quo Primum, which codified the ancient Roman (Latin) Liturgy for all time.
Marciel and Groer were not Traditional Catholics; they were fully Novus Ordo, although not as progressive as many. JP2 was certainly a Vatican 2 fan, as is Benedict Ratzinger. Ratzinger may want to dress up the Novus Ordo Missae with some traditional looking wrappings, as did Marciel, not to mention the cultists running Opus Dei, but the Novus Ordo is not, and can't ever be, the Traditional Roman Rite.
"Remember too that the Church dealt with corrupt and criminal priests in the past. Not so today."
DeleteI would not be so sure about this. There is a pretty clear record of Church authorities dealing with priests who commit criminal acts by hiding them from the proper civil authorities who do prosecute those criminal acts. In previous centuries the Church convinced the civil authorities to cede the prosecutorial authority to the church hierarchy in these cases. The Vatican does not have that authority any longer in many countries.
Veronica
In past centuries, priests found to have been involved in pederast acts were ceremoniously defrocked, the tendons in their hands were severed, and they were then turned over to the state authority to be executed. Seems harsh by today's standards, but it kept the problem in check. If the church did the same today, the rats would flee.
DeleteEven if true, none of this excuses the clerics from hiding other priests from civil criminal investigation, prosecution and punishment today and in the last century or so. But those clerics ARE dealing with the situation by the hiding and cover-ups. Just not the in a moral way. Nor will I agree that the method you describe is all that moral given its bloodthirstiness.
DeleteVeronica
There is also the fact that nations like Ireland have revealed this.record of clergy abuse going back over 85 years. Ireland, a nation which until the last 25 years did not allow contraceptives to be sold and still bans abortion. This notion that Vatican 2 and plain clothes nuns leading guitar masses correlated with the clergy abusing minors just doesn't hold up with the record in Ireland. Ireland was one of the most conservative and distinctively Catholic nations in Europe and had.some of the most notorious histories regarding this issue.
DeleteJohn Fremont
I don't think you quite get what I'm saying. I am not suggesting to you that child abuse at the hands of priests has not occurred until Vatican 2. What I am suggesting, and what the facts bear out, is that as the morals of society decay, there is always an increase in immoral acts. The sexual revolution occurred during the sixties. Should it come as any surprise that Vatican 2 did also? Legalized abortion followed the sexual revolution. The watered down theology of Vatican 2 predicated the massive increase in the numbers of child molestation cases. Late sixties through the nineties; terrible period of time, and although the number of abuse cases are down, they are barely so.
DeleteVatican 2 embraced the world, with all it's flaws and sins. The Church became a worldly institution looking to mankind for solutions instead of God.
One could draw a correlation between lessening moral values and the noticeably increasing numbers of teachers having sex with students. I don't think that's a stretch, and it's very much like the priest scandals today.
Does anyone imagine for a second that teachers, especially female ones, have always slept with their students, and that the only reason we're hearing about it more often is because of better technology? If I made that claim you'd think me a buffoon, and yet that is exactly the sort of nonsense people want to believe about the Catholic priesthood.
It's simple. Our morals have changed for the worse. Modesty doesn't exist. Purity is no longer a value. Pornography is everywhere. The 4 sins crying to Heaven for vengeance are celebrated today. We don't value life. And this is the world that Pope Paul VI embraced. Progressive thought in religion and morals existed prior to V2, but the Church worked hard to stamp it out of existence. Thus the Oath Against Modernism, the Syllabus of Errors, De Defectibus, etc., etc. Vatican II eliminated all of those safeguards and we are suffering the consequences.
Belittle Tradition all you want; I am reminded of the parable of the Pharisee and the sinner praying. We Traditionalists are the worst of sinners.
"Indeed, the general feeling that our society needs "new rubrics" (read new limitations) is one of the things I think undergirding these wars. It will be the misapplication of the need for more or different kinds of boundaries to foster the moral life and true spiritual growth that will become a baneful fascism-- but not the need itself, only its misapplication."
ReplyDeleteThat is a very good insight and an imprtant warning.
New rubrics? How about we seriously take up the 'new rubrics' that Christ gave us? Am I to suppose that when He gave His Sermon on the Mount that He faced an altar? Or faced the crowd He was trying to reach?
DeleteYes, I understand that different forms of stagecraft will reach different audience/community members in differing ways. What is effective at reaching one person or group of people can at the very same time leave others out in the cold. I'm not a liturgist by any stretch of the imagination. Please, let us not confuse stagecraft for actual worship. It seems to me that The Vatican is saying stagecraft equals worship when they dictate a single all-purpose rite right down to the single set of magical word combinations and hand gestures that may be used.
I fail to see how a cookie-cutter Mass liturgy handed down from The Vatican can possibly be effective for every single individual Catholic. I was born in 1962. I am too young to have any memory of the Latin Mass. My parents have insisted to me that they did not see any huge difference between the Latin Mass and the vernacular Mass and do not recall there being any huge upset in their community or personal prayer. I have attended several in more recent years as an adult in my diocese. For me the big difference was not the language being used, but the stagecraft. It left me shocked, uncomfortable and cold. I had no sense of participation whatsoever as a layperson let alone as a lay woman. I left with a sense not of being lead into a Mystery, but of exclusion. That said, I can understand where that is not the experience for every single Catholic who attends the Latin Rite Mass.
If The Vatican wants to truly shepherd the Church, they would not fear the use of rites that differ slightly so long as the worship of God and the development of spirit is the end goal of the liturgy. There would be no tossing around the word 'entertainment' as an epithet against a song that some people might actually find enhances their prayer.
Darn it anyway. Something about this topic is rubbing me the wrong way. Obviously a topic on which I need to reflect.
Veronica
Veronica,
DeleteI don't know why, but I was humming "Oh Holy Night" as I read your comment. The unwavering certainty that some, such as Jordan St. Francis above, have in an unchanging church is really based in a nostalgic misunderstanding of history.
In 1847 a French parish priest asked a local man to compose a poem that when later put to music became the beloved hymn of today, "Oh Holy Night".
See: http://www.findthepower.com/ChristmasPagesTheStoryOfOHolyNight.htm
Once performed the song became an instant hit and it endures as one of one of the most performed and most loved in the Christmas Canon. But it wasn't always so, the church suppressed the song when it became known the lyricist was not a practicing Catholic and the composer was a Jew. Sacré Bleu!
Where will this call for return to orthodoxy and tradition end? Maybe this hymn is safe because it predates Vatican 1, but it is a bit of a show tune. Perhaps it should be booted out as Piux IX, errr Blessed Pius IX inventor of Papal Infallibility, and his hierarchy tried to do. Is the 1,000 year old form of Gregorian chant too modern for the traditionalist? Or maybe we should settle for the Psalms of David, they're real old time religion, predating Jesus. Wait! That's not traditional enough, surely there must be something hummable that dates back to Moses!
Ah, Moses, that's when things were really carved in stone, such an era of certainty!
p2p
One thing that truly rankles me is this 'cookie cutter' approach is reserved for the West. There is no such approach in South America, Asia, or Africa--at least as a general principle. In these areas a little creativity including cultural traditions is considered a good thing. My God, even liturgical dance and drumming is acceptable!
DeleteWhy is there such a need for such tight control in the West? In my most cynical moments I sometimes think it's about recruiting a particular mind set to the priesthood. One that is rigid, naive, and codependent.
p2p: Oh Holy Night is one of my very favorite Christmas hymns, but I did not know and would never have thought to look up it's history. And why oh why am I not surprised to learn that back in the day it too was a controversy... Perhaps I am more of a rebel than I give myself credit for :)
DeleteColleen: Too many teachers are too inflexible in their teaching methods and examples. Out of laziness, or lack of depth of knowledge, or just the idea that the student must conform to the teacher's methods rather than the other way around. I suspect that The Vatican fits into all of these categories when it comes to the liturgy being used as a tool to teach the faith and pass on the tradition or even to worship God at its most basic. They clearly want to turn individual humans into robots through the crucible they tend. And yes, this would turn out their preferred material for the priesthood. Like I said, I'm no liturgist and I wouldn't want to be. Maybe it is just because the community gathered for any given Mass is too large for the interaction to be most effective between the priest and the rest of the faithful gathered. In which case the answer would be a return to house churches IMHO.
And thank you both for responding to my comment. I was half-certain my annoyance was blocking my understanding of the discussion. Now I think maybe I do understand and my annoyance comes from the understanding.
Veronica
Can't you just some pompous prissy little prig who recently was ordained from a neanderthal seminary trying to tell the experienced guys when to bow, when to scrape, when to mumble in latish and when to twirl so that their new skirts swish just so? And all those helpful hints on now to take grandma's old lace curtains and have them run up into oh-so pretty duds? Oh yes, indeedy!
ReplyDeleteJim McCrea
LOL!! Best laugh I had all day, Jim McCrea!!
DeleteI remember, I think, it's been awhile so if you want to dismiss this; go ahead. It was the mid 60's, I was in the library at St. Meinrad's Seminary and found this scholarly article on when to take off the berretta and make a little bow. I recall, after all these years, that the article was twenty-nine pages long. It was probably the first time I lost the faith in the institution.
ReplyDeleteIt's always interesting to read people who wish to defend "Holy Tradition". What they mean, of course, is just the preservation of ritual acts and gestures.
ReplyDeleteBut the true Holy Tradition is feeding the poor, clothing the naked, etc;etc.
I don't notice those who fiercely defend "Holy Tradition" being in the forefront, pushing everyone out of the way in order to feed the hungry etc;
I guess they're too busy making sure they bow correctly and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.
I thought that Jordan or the Anonymous Traditionalist might return and explain more on how SSPX et al has got it right and we're all wrong, New Order style.
ReplyDeleteSSPX "Bishop" Fellay recently made comments while in Canada. He said; "Who, during that time, was the most opposed that the Church would recognize the Society? The enemies of the Church. The Jews, the Masons, the Modernists". So there we have it. The rejection of the Novus Ordo isn't just about gesture and ritual. Their "authentic" theology is a return to the traditional antisemitism of pre-Vatican II.
Domine, miserere nobis!
p2p
See: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/bishop-fellay-jews-masons-and-modernists-are-enemies-of-the-church/
Do these people think they are fooling anyone with their overuse of Latin?
P2P,
DeleteI'm not certain you read my initial post carefully enough. I did not say that the SPPX was "right" and all progressives are "wrong". Though I favour traditional elements in the liturgy that and am disturbed by the continuing of the knee-jerk reaction to rid our liturgical life of anything that can be interpreted as hierarchical, I am hardly one side or the other. At least in a simple sense. So I didn't consider my role to come and explain abything about the SSPX to you. I don't worship with them. I worship in the New Mass regularly in the mainstream Church, and it's not like I have only negative things to say about it. How could I? I was raised in it, so of course I have certain sentimental attachments and I'm not oblivious to some of the needs the reforms addressed.
[aside] And a thank you to Mark for his comment to me.
If you don't think the Mass important enough to put it on the same level as "serving the poor, standing up for the oppressed, visiting the sick...", then perhaps you should consider just what it is that sets your faith apart from the protestants. If you consider what is meant by the Christian Interior Life, then you might rethink your views on the liturgy. Remember, Christ went off deserted places to pray, to prepare Himself, before He performed works of Charity, serving the poor etc., even before the Last Supper He prayed. That's what the Mass is supposed to be, the perfect prayer before the injunction of Christ to go forth and spread the Good News. The mass serves to prepare us as an army of Christ. It is not meant to exist to "provide entertainment" or as a side-show to the Sermon on the Mount.
ReplyDeleteIt would mean executing most of the bishops too. They're the ones hiding these criminals.
ReplyDeleteChrist is for all time. Popes come and go.
ReplyDelete