THIS LITURGIST (REMEMBER YOU CAN NEGOTIATE WITH A TERRORIST BUT NOT A LITURGIST) NEEDS TO BE REPLACED BY HIS BISHOP BECAUSE HE IS WORSE THAN THE BLOGGING PRIEST

One of the Good Liturgists!

Praytell, as silly as they are, strikes again with more progressive nonsense, the type of nonsense that has seen the Catholic Church lose more members  in the last 50 years than in any other period, except for plagues, forced conversions to Protestantism and Islam and atheism.

Our diocese under Bishop Hartmeyer, who will become the new Archbishop of Atlanta on May 6, has had no “Department of Liturgy” or “Director of Liturgy” in fact, I think I was the last “Director of Liturgy” for the diocese and I left that post in 1991.

I post some sound bytes from a Praytell article by Fr. Jim Sabak, OFM who is the Director of Liturgy for some unnamed diocese. It isn’t so much his authoritarian directives (which he says has the bishop’s approval) as bad as that is, but his snarky, unpastoral and dumb comments about the priests in his diocese. How in the name of God and all that is Holy, can he expect to be effective in his position if he alienates the priests in his diocese? What he says in a public article on a stupid blog about the priests in his diocese  should elicit an invitation from his bishop for a little pow wow (six feet apart, social distancing you know) that will lead to this priest’s permanent distancing from the priests of that diocese.

But this progressive attitude about priests and their primary role to be priests, not coordinators of ministries, not social butterflies, not social workers, not collaborators on this, that or the other, but to lead people to heaven through the Sacraments of the Church, through teaching the faith, through the sanctification of the people, through the religious leadership (ruling) of the parish, is the priest’s primary role as a PRIEST.  This is not to say the other things I mention aren’t important, but they aren’t as important as what the word PRIEST means. Others can do the other things I mention because they are important too just not as important as what a PRIEST is suppose to do.

With the collapse of the other things that aren’t as important due to the pandemic, progressives in the Church, especially silly progressives, want the sacramental aspect of the Church to collapse as well and foment such a collapse by the silly, authoritarian and snarky attitudes towards priests and what PRIESTS should be doing.

Clericalism and the Pandemic

April 18, 2020 Fr. Jim Sabak, OFM

The three sacramental areas most in need of attention were, of course, the celebration of the Eucharist, and the sacraments of Penance and Anointing of the Sick. If the virus had not materialized during Lent, Penance might have been less a point of controversy. So with the approval of the bishop, I prepared a memo offering some guidance on how to approach these sacraments given the seriousness of this world-wide pandemic.

For the Eucharist, we moved toward encouraging live-streamed celebrations of the Mass. Given the increasing restrictions limiting the number of people who could gather in public areas, naturally, it made sense. We asked, also, to avoid distribution of communion either before or after Mass, given that this practice isolated the sacramental elements from the context of the sacramental celebration.

For Penance, we asked clergy to discontinue “drive-up” celebrations as not the most appropriate way to celebrate the sacrament. Additionally, we noted that spacing a penitent six feet from a confessor did not provide for the essential privacy for individual celebration of the sacrament. For Anointing of the Sick we struggled to envision a manner by which to celebrate the sacrament especially with the terminally ill who had succumbed to the virus. We decided that prayer over the sick and with family would be best, given the problematic situation involved with touching the forehead and palms with the Oil of the Sick.

Within minutes of receiving the memo my email inbox exploded with question after question after question. Some only asked for clarity and expansion on what the memo contained. Other correspondence, however, contained an anger, which source was difficult to discern.

One of the ordained wrote that my suggestions made him question why he ever became a priest in the first place, and that he should have stayed in immigration law. Another sent the memo to the blog of the infamous Fr. Z, who proceeded to “rant,” as he is want. Fr. Z raved on that these guidelines left the faithful to eternal condemnation because they prohibited the faithful from receiving the necessary sacraments before death.

The reactions were both startling and puzzling, not just because they reflected an ignorance of the severity of the pandemic, but because of what they conveyed as an understanding of ordained ministry and of the work of the sacraments. The clergy who demanded to continue “saying” Mass, and “hearing” confessions, and “performing” anointings were doing so, it suggested, because “doing” these ritual actions defined who they are as priests, and only who they are as priests.

Given some of the current trends identifying clerical ministry as a sacramental dispensary, this revelation is nothing new. More critically, though, it inadvertently betrayed a troubling view of ordained ministry and sacramental ministry. A curious form of pandemic clericalism that compels the ordained to attend to the needs of the faithful, but on their own terms. These terms seem to favor ritual enactment over context.

READ THE REST OF THE NONSENCE THERE AT PRAYTELL BY PRESSING HERE