I really resonated with what Cardinal Sarah said in the interview he recently gave. This portion of it really struck me:
I am very struck by the fact that there is much talk about the Church, about her necessary reform. But are we talking about God? Are we talking about the work of Redemption that Christ accomplished mainly through the paschal mystery of his blessed Passion, his Resurrection from hell and his glorious Ascension, the paschal mystery by which “dying, he destroyed our death and, rising, he restored our life” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 5)? Rather than talking about ourselves, let us turn to God! This is the message I have been repeating for years. If God is not at the center of the Church’s life, then she is in danger of death. That is certainly why Benedict XVI said that the crisis of the Church is essentially a crisis of the liturgy because it is a crisis of the relationship with God.
My Comments: I grew up in the pre and post Vatican II Church. I don't really remember much of the preaching prior to Vatican II but afterward all I remember is Vatican II being preached and the various ideologies coming from theologians who said what Vatican II mandated, all superficial reforms of this, that and the other.
But the most superficial aspect that I remember the most, is the "communal" and that we are a community and we are to do this, that and the other.
Yes, from the time I was 14 and through my seminary experience in the late 70's, Vatican II was preached! Liturgy was preached! Ecclesiology was preached! Lay participation was preached! Social Justice was preached! Jesus? Not so much, but certainly He was implied.
I am not saying it is either/or but both/and. There is a hierarchy, Jesus first and then these other more banal things.
And yes, we have the Ordinary Form of the Mass which is the normal form of the Mass for about 99% of Latin Rite Catholics who still attend Mass. It would do well for local bishops and the pope to make sure that the Liturgy, as Cardinal Sarah asks, is completely God centered, reverent, without casualness and with attention to detail, especially the details of reverence and good taste. In this regard those who celebrate the OF Mass exclusively could learn a lot about reverence for God in a liturgical setting from those communities that celebrate the EF Mass.
Just saying....
29 comments:
Father McDonald,
Like you, I grew up before the Council and saw ZERO reasons for the "reforms." However, my experience, was probably somewhat different from yours. I attended Sunday Mass at the Basilica on the Notre Dame Campus where the Moreau Seminary Choir sang chant and polyphony beautifully. My parish Church where I went to grade school was influenced by its proximity to Notre Dame. Our school Mass in the morning was a Missa Cantata and the nuns were great teachers of the chant and they made sure we could pronounce the Latin responses properly. I was offended by what I viewed as the "unnecessary" which had the eventual effect of driving many away. I think with the EF back, it may someday be the normative experience for those Catholics who still continue to come to Mass. These past 40 years are akin to the Jews wandering in the desert
I am not disagreeing as to reverence being crucial to the Mass, the spiritual life, and the Church, as without those, it is nothing but what Jesus preached so firmly against, dead ritual.
But without that true attempt to commune with God, any improvement to the form of the Mass is merely that. The people need instruction in getting in touch with God, and they do not get it. If they have a reverent Mass, it is seen as stuffy and boring, and they automatically look for something/anything to provide some "positive" experience, and hence all the modern superficialities trying to fill that void.
The root cause is utter lack of spiritual catechesis, where the Mass was seen as dead formalism well before Vatican II and led directly to attempts to "improve", as it was so empty and unfilfilling...but they merely exchanged one brand of pharisaism for another, still lacking the basics on exactly how one goes about getting in touch with God.
A reverent Mass is a great help to those truly seeking God, but is boring to all the rest.
“dead formalism?” That was not my experience. You sound like you’re parroting the National Anti/Catholic Reporters talking points
No, Pierre, am merely reporting how it was in many places, and how it is today in many/most places.
Would also say that packed mega Masses, even with glorious music, full orchestra, sumptuous vestments and hundreds of pounds of incense burned, are no help when people are whispering, reading and page flipping, today noodling on phones, ill disciplined children running riot, etc etc
Where what would serve far better would be smaller and more intimate Masses, and more of them, as parishoners led to an encounter with God. But it seems all which matters to the combatants on either side is only the ritual.
There will be no renewal without a spiritual awakening, a wholehearted seeking after God. And the people get near zero spiritual instruction, and then everyone wonders why the Church is imploding. It is imploding because it is not leading people to truly experience God, and seems to have forgotten how, or even that this is what it all is for, Mass, Sacraments, the Church itself, to help foster union with God, saints.
How do you know how it was in many places? Did you travel extensively to US parishes prior to the Council? I did and not see the dead formalism you speak of
Anonymous at 1:08 PM,
I should have added because I received my formation in the Faith prior to the Council, I had a strong foundation in the sacraments, including the Mass. In the wake of the Council, real substantive teaching of the Faith ceased altogether. In terms of Mega Masses, which are a mistake, I have missed the "glorious music" of which you speak. As a trained musician, with over 40 years in Church music, I find most of it to be tasteless, narcissistic, tripe
Pierre, look at the great implosion of Christianity in general minus that basic teaching of union with God in love.
Look at all the Westerners fleeing Christianity for Eastern religions, occult practices, adopting even those practices to their own religion, because they were NOT being taught how to experience God, how to KNOW this is all real, and not some quaint fairy tale, how to KNOW when told they were dying that it is no big deal past only another stepping stone to true knowledge.
People are looking for answers, not rites, answers to the big questions where they experience the Truth of it, where there is no guesswork, no clever intellectual arguments.
The clever arguments are only to get them to admit even the possibility and even try, but the rites and intellectualization are no substitute for loving God totally, and those rites and intellectualizations are NOT the answer in themselves, and are empty minus that one needful thing, that one best part, and not being only some sounding brass or tickling cymbal.
Those who stay in the Church was good, practical preaching to help them live life in a Christian way with their spouses, children other family and friends. They want to feel connected to God and Church. They want community, even if it is a silent community. People can find community in a chapel of 40 people in silent adoration.
But people are pulled in all kinds of directions and unfortunately, the Church takes a back seat to other priorities. What have we done that encourages people to see the Church as icing on the cake of their lives not the main ingredient?
Pierre, I shall put it this way. How many true saints do you know? People who clearly are so united in love to God, that you have a burning desire to be just as them simply by being exposed to them, and would do ANYthing to have that precious treasure?
Without those sorts of people, there can be no renewal. Without those striving to be such, there can be no renewal. It is the entire point of the religion, union in love with God now, and for eternity.
"What have we done that encourages people to see the Church as icing on the cake of their lives not the main ingredient?"
I don't think we have encouraged the "icing" view.
100 years ago, neighborhoods were segregated racially, according to national origins, and, in many places, religiously. South Philly was Italian-Catholic, New Britain, Connecticut, aka "New Britski," was Polish-Catholic, northern New Hampshire was largely French-Catholic. The neighborhood church was the center of their lives for faith, for socializing, for youth activities, for school. If you were from NYCity and well-to-do and wanted to spend the summer at the "shore," you went to Deal, NJ, which is still about 80% Jewish.
Cars were relatively scarce, money was tight in much of the working-class Catholic community, and mixing with those who were "different" was often discouraged, if not outright forbidden.
Come the 1950s and most of the isolation, whatever the cause, began to disappear. Opportunities for experiences outside the neighborhoods, away from the churches became available. In that era, the "teenager" came into existence as a distinct human subclass, in large part because they started to have their own money which was, by and large, theirs to spend.
Choices appeared to the teen generation that the parents born in the 1920s and 1930s could not have imagined. (My mother, who was born in 1915, flew exactly once in an airplane - a bi-plane that she and her best friend paid a quarter (!) to go up in with a barnstormer who landed in Forsyth Park in downtown Savannah.)
What we may have failed to do it help people understand the connection between faith and life, that what I profess to believe should have an impact on how I recreate, run my business, raise my children, spend my money. We may have never made faith practical, other than to warn people what would happen if they strayed.
Anonymous,
Do you believe in the sacraments which Christ left us to aid in our quest for sanctity. Those sacraments are here always, in good times and bad times. The Church is, and always been comprised of, saints and sinners. Our Lord dined with sinners.
Father K,
And vote for the Abortion Party. Quite the faith you have there
Interesting to see the word "renewal" used so much here. That's a good thing. I have been hearing about "reform" ever since I can remember. The Protestant "reformation" didn't reform a darned thing, but instead just created more fissures and breaks in the Body of Christ. Not that I was around, but it seems that the Council of Trent was a real reform, or at least a tune-up for what was lacking in the governance of the Church and Her liturgy at the time. I am still amused to hear--especially from the clueless secular media--about "Vatican II reforms". It seems that the more devoted our hierarchy are to the work of "reform" the more sin and corruption we continue to see (as well as suspect teachings that can hardly be called "Catholic").
Yes, there will be renewal. Jesus promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church. But He didn't tell us how close we would get to those gates and the temperature is noticeably hotter these days. I suspect we will get a real reform when some Heaven-sent cataclysm purifies humanity (and the leaders in Rome and the USCCB--if any are left). Sadly, the sickness has gotten so bad that the cure is going to be most painful. Horrifyingly painful. Unimaginably painful. It's just a matter of when and how much more God is willing to put up with.
I don't agree with everything posted by Fr Mike Kavanaugh, and how he votes is nobody's concern other than his own, but his comments about generational differences ring true. My mother, born in 1919, was highly educated and a brilliant teacher. Not only did she never fly in an aeroplane, she never learned to drive and never travelled outside England. She died of cancer at the age of fifty-four.
My father, after completing teacher training did war service in the RAF as a wireless technician and was stationed in India, Ceylon and Burma. My parents' generation had their twenties disrupted by the Second World War, but it is interesting that the higher education institutions they attended were Catholic and turned out teachers for Catholic schools.
The teenage culture may have originated in the USA which was the main beneficiary of the War, but it spread rapidly, helped by growing prosperity in the West. The Catholic culture of my parents' generation would not have survived the 1960s with or without Vatican II which was part catalyst and part symptom.
It should of course be remembered that the revolutionaries who surfaced at the time of Vatican II were of an earlier generation - Paul VI was born in the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, and John Courtney Murray was born in 1904.
John Nolan,
I disagree that no one should be concerned about how a Catholic priest votes. They should, because it speaks volumes about his commitment to the Catholic Faith. When you vote Democratic in the US you are voting for infanticide and a whole host of intrinsic evils. It is that simple. There is no proportional reason to vote for the Party of Moloch. In the so-called Covid Relief relief bill that was just passed by a Democratic Congress it included billions for Planned Parenthood, a fully foreseeable event. You cannot separate your voting pattern from your Faith.
"When you vote Democratic in the US you are voting for infanticide and a whole host of intrinsic evils. It is that simple.
Anonymous, you CANNOT know the minds and hearts of others, including those who do not vote as you do.
I will tell you that no vote I have ever cast has been FOR any evil, intrinsic or otherwise.
If, as you suggest, there is "no proportional reason" to vote for for someone who does not share our moral values, why, then, did the Church through the Holy Father, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the bishops world-wide speak directly to the possibility that such exists?
Give it a rest . You are responsible for the consequences of your vote. When you vote Democratic you are voting for a party committed to infanticide. There is no offsetting proportional reason to get you off the moral hook you have placed yourself on. Your party just passed covid relief which includes funding for abortion. What does that have to do with the pandemic. Biden is also allowing illegal aliens infected with covid into the US, which is morally reprehensible. You conveniently check your morals and common sense off at the voting booth. You are simply contumacious
If voters are responsible for the consequences of their votes, then everyone who voted from Truman is responsible for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, everyone who voted for FDR is responsible for his adultery, everyone who voted for Jackson is responsible for Indian Removal Act, and everyone who voted for Nixon/Agnew is responsible for that mess.
Plainly, your assertion is not correct.
As for being "contumacious," the authority that I follow is the teaching of the Church, not yours.
If everyone with any moral scruples voted Republican, you'd end up with a one-party dictatorship. My late aunt who lived in Pennsylvania was the only one of her extended Catholic family to vote for Donald Trump in 2016. She cheerfully admitted it, but didn't have to - after all in the US you have a secret ballot.
Yes, give it a rest people. When you criticize someone--especially someone known to a certain public by name--for voting a certain way, they are going to try to justify their vote. If you honestly think you are going to get ANYONE, Democrat or Republican to do otherwise in a forum like this, then you are crazy.
In fact, let's REALLY give it a rest. As lousy, embarrassing and stinking as our national government is, why does every discussion end up going political? Enough.
I don’t care to divorce myself from my political leaders no matter how much I detest them personally. And I must accept responsibility for all that happens in the Republic especially those things I want to change or correct. The extent to which I share fame or blame as well as the specifics of my burden vary by my personal participation in any specific act.
If every single post Father McDonald offers must devolve into the rest of us playing "gotcha" with each other about politics, maybe Father should consider changing the name of this blog. My suggestion: "Beating the Dead Horse"
Indeed and the FRMJK beating of a dead horse in conjunction with the other dead horses are creating a swarm of horse flies.
Fr. ALLAN McDonald - How many times have you beaten the "PLAGUE FROM THE COMMON CUP!!!" and "PUT THE ALTAR RAILS BACK!!!"
Asking for a friend...
Yes! Thanks for reminding me about my clairvoyant predictions about the common chalice producing a worldwide pandemic as it is pandemic producing. I give myself mega kudos for that.
And yes the altar railing would end the pandemic of irreverence at Communion time. Kudos to me for that too.
["When you vote Democratic in the US you are voting for infanticide and a whole host of intrinsic evils. It is that simple.
Anonymous, you CANNOT know the minds and hearts of others, including those who do not vote as you do.]
If people who are of moral virtue cannot make an effort to find out what the Democrat platform contains and figure out if comports with what anyone of good character and Christian or similar values could support, should such people vote at all?
[What we may have failed to do it help people understand the connection between faith and life]
Thank you. That's how end up with a Biden and Pelosi.
[If, as you suggest, there is "no proportional reason" to vote for for someone who does not share our moral values, why, then, did the Church through the Holy Father, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the bishops world-wide speak directly to the possibility that such exists?]
A very remote possibility. one that is so very remote in the hierarchy of moral and ethical importance.
[Truman is responsible for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, everyone who voted for FDR is responsible for his adultery, everyone who voted for Jackson is responsible for Indian Removal Act]
These are so remote from the personal responsibility of a voter as to be inapplicable.
[ My suggestion: "Beating the Dead Horse"]
That is applicable. Without the intervention of grace and conversion, it is an exercise in futility.
"If people who are of moral virtue cannot make an effort to find out what the Democrat platform contains and figure out if comports with what anyone of good character and Christian or similar values could support, should such people vote at all?"
Yes, such people should vote. Anyone who has a right to vote should vote. There can be no tests for character, good Christian or otherwise, or competence or levels of understanding. We tried that for many decades in the USA, denying the franchise to many who were thought of as "not the right kind of people." And you know what that means.
"Thank you. That's how end up with a Biden and Pelosi."
That may be, but I suggest it is a simplistic understanding of either or both of them.
"A very remote possibility. one that is so very remote in the hierarchy of moral and ethical importance."
That decision is, peoperly, left to the voter, not to someone who claims to have the authority or the intelligence or the whatever to determine. That it is left to the voter is the respect that each person is owed.
"These are so remote from the personal responsibility of a voter as to be inapplicable."
The statement by Anon at 10:34 on 12 March was "You are responsible for the consequences of your vote." If this applies universally today, it applies to Truman, FDR, and Jackson. Unless Anon wants to modify his/her position.
"That is applicable. Without the intervention of grace and conversion, it is an exercise in futility.
I hope, though I have my doubts, that there may be people who follow this blog who are helped by the sometimes adult give-and-take among us and who, like me, find a little humor in some of the less than adult exchanges. They don't post responses. So, I would not agree that it is futile.
Some of the comments on this blog can be puerile and less than charitable, and even beyond that, but when some who comment here post comments opposing abortion, trangenderism, and same sex-marriage, they are at least in agreement with Church teaching on these most important issues which is something you can't say about our Catholic President and Speaker of the House. As a Catholic, I just don't understand this. By the way, I oppose the death penalty but there are so few executed in this country each year that it pales in comparison to abortion. And yes, let's help migrants and immigrants in some way but no sane country in the world allows people to just walk across the border to take up residence, especially during a pandemic.
There is a hierarchy of values and it is very clear that the right to life is at the top of the list. Thus, anyone who votes for a party which prioritises abortion has much to answer especially when the opposition party -republican - has shown that it values the rights of the unborn.
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