Apart from what is taking place at a Sunday Mass do you detect anything unusual about the congregation?
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
DOES THE ORDINARY FORM OF THE MASS REALLY DESERVE THIS KIND OF ADD-ON?
Why do people think that the Ordinary Form of the Mass as it is spelled out in the Liturgical Books and its General Instruction, needs additional things added to it to make it look and feel creative and different? Is not the Word of God and the Sacrifice of Christ, not to mention the reception of our Risen Lord, His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity enough to satisfy the hungry heart?
Apart from what is taking place at a Sunday Mass do you detect anything unusual about the congregation?
Apart from what is taking place at a Sunday Mass do you detect anything unusual about the congregation?
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23 comments:
This seems to be a failure to guard against "the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy", as good 'ole Sacrosanctum Concilium (no. 21) put it. The next paragraph of the text, oft quoted but to little avail, insists that no one but the pope and, to a very limited extent, the bishops, "...may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority".
Whenever someone calls himself a "Vatican Two" Catholic while defending images like this one, it always sounds to me something like an American Revolutionary War hero being knighted by King George III! The contradiction is just too obvious.
Vatican II is the Council of faithful Catholics, not of hippies. One simply cannot get away with this nonsense and remain faithful to the Council. The four constitutions have their ambiguities, but not enough to allow this.
I wonder what Catholic Mutual insurance company thinks about swinging a long pole around in a room full of people!
Yes, why yes I do, Father. There appear to actually be a couple of folks singing! Or at least their hymnals are open!
Are you saying that if they're old enough to sing "We shall overcome" or "They'll know we are Christians by our love" by memory, the residual affect of the sixties will again kick in when the folks are in their own sixties? That meme, the biological destiny one, has become tiresome to me (I'm sixty, I chant, I like ad orientem and EF's- so I'm a mutant?)
Look at the post-pubescent zombies occupying "Peoples' Park" opposite Wall St. It's odd, but not weird, the old Alinsky's enabling the young slackers. I quoteth the great Cobain: "Smells like teen spirit."
As our Lord was probably interrupted by some indigent soul tugging at His garment, He never got to finish "The poor will always be among us, and yeah, so will the dissolute, so get used to 'The man who came to dinner.'"
Nice flags. But they need to work on their samba line choreography. They could brush up on that in some Vegas parishes. Harrumph.
What is this? If you hadn't said it was at a mass I would have thought it was indoors at an Oktoberfest.
It looks like there is a rabbi next to the square column. is that it?
rcg
Not only was this a Sunday Mass, a bishop was present during this Mass.
I saw some other pictures of this event and church. They have totally wrecked what was surely a very beautiful old church by making this theater in the round. What a sacrilege.
Charles, I feel your pain. I'm soon to be 58 so these are my people, my generation! But why is it that at such a happy flaggy event, these people still look like actors from "The Night of the Living Dead?" In fact most pictures of people attending an OF Mass, especially when standing through the Eucharistic Prayer look like people from aforementioned movie. And yes, these people are spectators (maybe internally absorbing the meaning of the flags with no external discernible participation?)I thought internal participation only was anathema to this generation of baby boomer Catholics!
So this further proof of rcg's Fourth Law (the Fool's Law).
After further consideration maybe the bishop will allow the 1812 Overture with fireworks during the Gloria. The flag waivers could clearthe smoke.
rcg
I thought it was they all looked about half dead and they were dressed like the people at the homeless shelter. Well, guess I missed it. Those were rainbow colored flags...you sure it wasn't some gay rights debauche?
In addition, where are the children in this photo, the next generation to bear the flag of this one? Oh, I forgot, they were contracepted!
"...They were contracepted." In my tiny parish of 80 families, only around ten percent participate in the traditional Mass. However, fully sixty percent of the children here are at the traditional Mass each Sunday. It's not a perfect statistical model, but at the very least it gives me a joyful chuckle!
It still never ceases to amaze me how many priests tolerate and even encourage this sacrilegious silliness. As Catholics, we witness a miracle every time we attend Mass, the miracle of Transubstantiation. I am sure that in the 4th Century, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, there were people who found Mass boring just as many do today. That was not cause then for adding cheap gimmicks and it should not be now. When we try to "enhance" the liturgy with our lame attempts at entertainment or making it "relevant" we show such little confidence in the great power of the Mass. It is the Mass that gives life to our Church and meaning to our lives, yet so many of us still doubt its power and efficacy and demonstrate that doubt by these ridiculous "add-ons". When my children are fully grown, middle aged adults, I have no doubt they are going to look at some of the liturgical "experiments" and hideous-looking churches we've built and laugh at us. And we deserve it.
I spy with my little eye a lady in a chapel veil. I'm surprised they haven't told her that it's sexist since it denotes a woman's place under a man (who is under God, but that is never mentioned), it's "old fashioned", and only Traditionalist "snobs" wear them.
Charles,
I wouldn't be so quick to judge Las Vegas! Every year, I travel to Las Vegas on business and catch the Sunday evening 5:00PM mass at the Guardian Angel Cathedral. My jaw dropped when they used the missal chants this year, in Latin no less!
The girl standing in the back right-center is good looking...
Small screen on phone, but looks like no children and mostly middle age/older and lack of minorities.
What has a lack of minorities to do with anything? Besides, you don't know...there could be some autistic people there, or some South Africans, or Dutch, or people from Luxembourg. There may be some people with lupus or a concert pianist or two. All of those are "minorities."
Fr. Shelton, every mass is traditional whether the language is English, Latin, or German.
Misappropriating the word makes you look foolish.
Yep, Ignotus is back. Deliberate misunderstanding and studied obtuseness in refusing to understand contexts is truly an indication of foolishness. I'll bet everyone on this blog except you understood exactly what Fr. Shelton meant.
AJ,
Though my tongue was in cheek with that quip, it wasn't a judgment of "Vegas" liturgy at all, it was a direct recollection from the 2000 NPM Western Regional Convention at a parish, not the Cathedral, where there literally was a samba line dance during the Gospel Acclamation. (I have visited the Cathedral, a noble building.) This closing convention liturgy featured a full on Praise Band (each singer with a hand held mic) and the band's amps each were also mic'd up. Short anecdote- at the K of Peace, my wife turned to a very elderly gent behind us in polyester blue, who then confessed to her he wasn't Catholic, but loved coming to this parish every Sunday because they "change the show every week!" As funny as that was at the surface level, it confirmed that it was time to abandon any association with NPM (National Pastoral Musicians.)
Charles, YIKES--maybe I need to ask our choir director/organist to abandon it too?
Ignotus: "every mass is traditional"
Would that it were so!
Yes, Anonymous, but you have to remember that Ignotus and his ilk are egalitarian/de-constructionists/progressivists. Anything called "Mass" is "traditional" for them, whether it be Italian acrobats in the aisles, folk songs with Ripple and Sunbeam raisin bread for communion, or a Gay Pride march up the aisle for the processional. As long as the sacred is de-emphasized and the human is exalted anything goes.
Pin,you nailed it again about Pater Ignotus!
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