WHEREIN THE BLOG MASTER MAKES A CORRECTION ON A COMMENT, AS HE IS PRONE TO DO

On a previous post on the Liturgy, I wrote this most astute comment:

I had a funeral once and had planned the liturgy with the family, only to have a relative from another state intervene with her own lists of songs to be sung. I ignored it. But along the way, we were taught that others should plan the liturgy no matter how poor their choices are. Then at the wake service she asked for her family member to read the Scripture and her children to bring up the gifts. I told her no,we have suspended bringing up the gifts, we don't need eucharistic ministers and we had already chosen a lector at the meeting I had with the family. She said, well, how are we to participate and I said, but doing so from the pew. That's the most important act of participation. she didn't realize that, given how we have clericalized the laity in our liturgy. 

August 25, 2020 at 3:51 PM

Then, Fr. Michael Kavanaugh wrote:

"Liberals have many straw men, Latin, ad orientem and certainly the EF Mass. Lay participation becomes a god,...

There's a pretty obvious straw man right there, Fr. ALLAN McDonald. Lay participation isn't a "god," it isn't worshipped. 

Lay participation, including EM's and lectors, is fosterred and welcomed by the Church as a good. 

There are always those who go to extremes in their views, both traddies and VAT II spiriters. But lay participation isn't a bad thing per se.

August 25, 2020 at 4:19 PM

More of my most astute comments:

If the good Father had read my entire comment, he would have read that I told the woman who was meddling in her relative’s funeral plans that at my meeting with the parent, a lector was chosen (by the father) and (I had contacted the person to confirm he would be the reader).

The relative, then asked me (at the wake of all places) if her daughter could be the lector. I said the deceased father had chosen the lector and I confirmed with the lector to be. Then she asked if anyone could be a Eucharistic Minister. I said we no longer provide the (pandemic producing) common chalice and have no need for additional Eucharistic Ministers since I and our parochial vicar would distribute the Host. 

Then she asked if her family could present the offerings. I said, no because we no longer do that. 

THEN SHE SAID, HOW COULD THEY PARTICIPATE IN THIS FUNERAL, TO WHICH I SAID, BY PARTICIPATING ACTIVELY FROM THEIR PLACE IN THE CHURCH. 

Of course my implied point is that lay participation isn’t in the Clericalizing  the the laity in this, that or the other or making the lay ministries into gods. 

A lay lector was chosen. Altar servers chosen. Cantor chosen. But this northeast Catholic family member did not think what she and her family do from the pew in terms of active/actual participation was good enough. What rubbish!

And now directors of the Ordinary Form of the Mass have another issue concerning inclusivity into the formal lay ministries of the Ordinary Form. In Argentina, and one of its more conservative dioceses, a new bishop unwittingly asked a “woman” to pray one of the petitions at a Mass. He has been praised by the left wing of the Church, the heterodox, because this “woman” was actually a biological man, a gender given him by his Creator, God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But that gift of gender was not to his pleasing or what he “felt” he was so he transitioned to becoming a ‘woman” which is an impossibility according to his genetic makeup created by God. Thus he either mutilated  his body to appear as a woman or he dressed as a woman, either way, he is not a woman. And what he is doing is immoral. And for him to be asked to do any formal ministry at Mass is an implicit or explicit endorsement by the Church that gender ideology is no problem, the ideology of inclusivity must trump orthodox Catholic teaching that God is our creator and the one who blesses us with our gender, male and female He created us.

But the god of lay participation says we must, we must, we must, in the name of the god of inclusivity include LGBTQ+++ in every aspect of lay ministries, including the priesthood and religious life, not to mention, lector’s, communion ministers, cantors, especially if they are front and center, and altar servers. This is called idolatry, pagan idolatry at that.

Transgender woman’s role at Mass stirs controversy in Argentina

• Inés San Martín
  Aug 28, 2020
  ROME BUREAU CHIEF

Francia López, wearing a light blue face mask, before reading a prayer of the faithful during a Mass in San Luis, Argentina, on Aug. 25, 2020. (Credit: screen caption.)